rries with it one blessing, in
that it drives us, willy-nilly, into the open air, day and night. And on
looking at statistics we find precisely what might have been expected on
this theory, that the death-rate for pneumonia is lowest in July and
August.

It might be said in passing that, in spite of our vivid dread of
sunstroke, of cholera, and of pestilence in hot weather, the hot months
of the year in temperate climates are invariably the months of fewest
diseases and fewest deaths. Our extraordinary dread of the summer heat
has but slender rational physical basis. It may be but a subconscious
after-vibration in our brain cells from the simoons, the choleras, and
the pestilences of our tropical origin as a race. Open air, whether hot,
cold, wet, dry, windy, or still, is our best friend, and house air our
deadliest enemy.

If this view be well founded, then the advance of modern civilization
would tend to furnish a more and more favorable soil for the spread of
this disease. This, unfortunately, is about the conclusion to which we
are being most unwillingly driven. Almost every other known infectious
disease is diminishing, both in frequency and in fatality, under
civilization. Pneumonia alone defies our onslaughts. In fact, if
statistics are to be taken at their surface-value, we are facing the
appalling situation of an apparently marked increase both in its
prevalence and in its mortality. For a number of years past, ever since,
in fact, accurate statistics began to be kept, pneumonia has been listed
as the second heaviest cause of death, its only superior being
tuberculosis.

About ten years ago it began to be noticed that the second competitor in
the race of death was overtaking its leader, and this ghastly rivalry
continued until about three years ago pneumonia forged ahead. In some
great American cities it now occupies the bad eminence of the most fatal
single disease on the death-lists.

The situation is, however, far from being as serious and alarming as it
might appear, simply from this bald statement of statistics. First of
all, because the forging ahead of pneumonia has been due in greater
degree to the falling behind of tuberculosis than to any actual advance
on its part. The death-rate of tuberculosis within the last thirty years
has diminished between thirty and forty per cent; and pneumonia at its
worst has never yet equaled the old fatality of tuberculosis.
Furthermore, all who have carefully studi