Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1871 — One Hundred Millions a Year! [ARTICLE]

One Hundred Millions a Year!

Sjsvbntv- four thousand doctors! Think of it. All this number in our country, according to the present census, unless the newspapers inform us falsely. In 1860 there were fifty-five thousand—an increase of 19,000 in ten years, or nearly two thousand a year! Ought not these figures to “ give us pause »" Reflect a moment what an army they would make, even in this day of big armies; or what a city they would form, larger than any in many of the oldest States. Or, look at it again from another point of view. What a mint es money it takes to support this army! Probably we are within the mark when we calculate that the average income of the 74,000 from practice is a thousand dollars a year each. This makes $74,000,000 a year, which the sick pay for medical advice. For their medicines it is safe to say they pay theodd $26,000,000 which remains to make up $100,000,000 a year, as what sickness costs the American people. And in this calculation we have left altogether out of account the tons and hogsheads of quack medicines which this misguided ]>eople pour down their throats. We can safely estimate that at $25,000,000 a year more. Let the people study these figures awhile, and then reflect that probably onehalf, or certainly a large fraction of this expense, is incurred by a deliberate infraction of the laws of health; that if they tippled less, smoked less, over-worked less, were less given to debauchery, ate slower, were less “ fast,” and less self-in-dulgent, they would save some thirty or forty millions a year. Making money is, in America, the “chief end of man,” and plenty of advisers are ready with their wise saws how it can be accomplished. We are one of them, and offer a saw quite as true, and less trite than any of them, and it is this—keep healthy. Living in the midst of a commercial mart, and in the thick of the desperate conflict for wealth, we have seen many a hero in the fight lose all for want of health,- lose it, perhaps, just'at the moment when a month or two more of work would have made w fortune. , It is said that when Alexander VI. died, his son, the famous Casar Borgia, had every provision made to sleze the supreme power and make himself master of Italy; that he had every possible contingency guarded, but one, ana that was his >own physical inability to take advantage of the crisis. But sickened to threatening illness, by the sfune poisoned wine, which killed his father, he lost his chance and died defeated, an exile and a captive. It were well if many an American business man took warning by the inoral which this fragment of history conveys, and would remember that the labor of a life may be lost by the preventable illness of a week.— Medical and Surgical Reporter.