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Updated: May 2, 2025
Anything which lowers the general health and strength and weakens the resisting power of the body will make it much easier for pus-germs to get an entrance into it, and overwhelm it; so that, after prolonged famines for instance, or among the population of besieged cities, or in armies or exploring expeditions which have been deprived of food and exposed to great hardship, the merest scratch will fester and inflame, and give rise to a serious and even fatal attack of blood-poisoning, erysipelas, hospital gangrene, etc.
Ceylon, however, is very productive and prosperous. Surrounded by the sea, it is free from Indian droughts and famines. Its people are stalwart and loyal. The English language is fast becoming the easiest method of communication between Cingalese and Tamils, Hindus and Malays. Colombo is really a European city, as large as Rochester, with noble public buildings and lovely parks.
Famines can never be banished from a country where vast tracts are entirely dependent upon an extremely uncertain rainfall, and the population is equally dependent upon the fruits of the soil. But besides the scientific organization of famine relief, the public works policy of Government has been steadily and chiefly directed to the reduction of famine areas.
Throughout the Middle Ages of Europe, and down almost to our own day, the rate of infant mortality was almost as large as in a savage state; medical ignorance destroyed innumerable lives; antiseptic surgery being unknown, serious wounds were still almost always fatal; in the low state of sanitary science, plagues such as those which in the reign of Justinian swept across the civilised world from India to Northern Europe, well nigh depopulating the globe, or the Black Death of 1349, which in England alone swept away more than half the population of the island, were but extreme forms of the destruction of population going on continually as the result of zymotic disease; while wars were not merely far more common but, owing to the famines which almost invariably followed them, were far more destructive to human life than in our own days, and deaths by violence, whether at the hands of the state or as the result of personal enmity, were of daily occurrence in all lands.
The average yield for the five famine years that have occurred during the twenty-year period was six and one-quarter bushels of wheat per acre." "That is wretched," said Adelaide, "I know about the Russian famines for we have made contributions through our church for their relief, but that condition can surely never come to this great rich new country, can it?"
It appeared from the privy council report, that from 1698 to 1730 the decrease was three and a half per cent.; from 1730 to 1755 it was two and a half per cent.; from 1755 to 1768 it was lessened to one and three quarters; and from 1768 to 1788 it was not more than one per cent.: this last decrease was not greater than could be accounted for from hurricanes and consequent famines, and from the number of imported Africans who perished in the seasoning.
When famines came, God sent them; they were punishment for sin; his will be done! When wars came, they were the flails of God to thresh his people; his will be done! Men were resigned to slavery on the ground that God had made men to be masters and slaves. They were resigned to feudalism and absolute monarchy on the ground that God had made men to be rulers and ruled.
Sometimes we increased, then came pestilences and famines, outbreaks of lava and hot mud and gases, and nearly all died. At one time only seven remained " "For all the world like the story of Pitcairn Island and the mutineers of the 'Bounty'!" interrupted the engineer. "Yes, yes go on!" "There is little more to tell.
His work of order was necessarily a costly work; and the steady pressure of his taxation, a pressure made the harder by local famines and plagues during his reign, has left traces of the grumbling it roused in the pages of the English Chronicle. But even the Chronicler is forced to own amidst his grumblings that Henry "was a good man, and great was the awe of him."
They will know why wars and famines were inevitable for us, and why nothing could avert doom from the youth of our Europe. There is no disputing the importance of these confessions. But their relationship to literature? For that matter they might be linoleum.
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