Washington's Death

It was in 1782 that George Washington was bom, and now it is 1891. One hundred and iifty-nine years ago, then, it was that he first sawhe light, and it is only in secent years that men have begun to comprehend the true greatness of the man. When two years ago the one hundredth anniversary of his inaugura tion as President of the United States was observed by the American people, public attention was extensivaly drawn to a serious contemplation of his character as a man and as a statesman. Men who have givjn much of their time to a study of history turned their attention to that portion of time covered by his eventful life, and discovered nothing new of course in point of fact, but many new phases of his noble character. Washington was his sixty-eig-hth year when he died. He was not an old man. Many men of to-day regard themselves as in the heyday of youth at. sixty-eight. He walked about his farm when the snow was f ; Jling an d took a slight cold which rapidly grew worse and in a few hours proved fatal. "Acute laryngitis," the physicians of the day called his disease. How little the medical men of those days really knew about diseases and their proper treatment! They bied him and when they found that this did no good they held a consultation of physicians and bied him again. Excellent physicians of the present day say that the disease which attacked General Washington was bv no means necessarily fatal and that with the knowledge possessed by the medical profession of to-day his life might easily have been preserved, perhaps for many years. The wonderful advance which both medical and surgical science have made during the past century should be better appreciated by the world at large.