Deep Progress

Of late I've been making my way through Impossible Monsters, Michael Taylor's book about how the discovery of dinosaurs in the 19th century -- and especially the finding of lots of them in Great Britain then -- informed the eventual overthrow of a profoundly and suprisingly repressive Christianity that was prevalent there then. It's a bit of a grind, at times just about as scintillating as it sounds, though it has its moments.

In the mornings I've been reading Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, which came up in conversation with Graham because there was a question about it in a recent Quiz Bowl tournament somewhere. The book was a big hit in its day, I'll come back to discuss that later.

One thing that's common between them and a little surprising to those of us who pass our days within the comforting bosom of the 21st century is how easily people died one and two centuries ago, even those like Taylor's subjects who were the denizens of the economic and scientific elite of a world power in the fullness of its flourishing. Kids just got sick and they were dead a day or two later. Darwin lost two of his ten kids in infancy, another (a favorite) died at the age of 10. He and his wife suspected that maybe their kids were genetically weak because they were cousins but had nonetheless wed. The people of Spoon River -- who narrate from beyond the grave -- also die from a wide range of things easily preventable or curable now, including lots from accidents that just don't happen now because of workplace safety or product design regulations.

In short, people have benefited an awful lot in the last couple of centuries from the deepening and dissemination of medical best practices but also due to the rise of public health and the regulations to which the discipline has given rise. More or less from the rise of policy informed by statistics. How easily this is forgotten. People have lived longer and better lives.

It ain't all perfect. The rise of "deaths of despair" and their negative impact on aggregate mortality -- especially in the US -- has been a challenge over the last decade and change. We should keep working on it.