Note and Comment

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 5, 1903

The New York Christian Advocate calls attention to the growing insecurity of life and limb in the United States, due to the increasing prevalence of accidents. “Recent reports of the Census Bureau about accidents in this country,” it says, “are alarming. In 1900 the proportion of deaths from accidental causes was 57.6 in a total of 1,000 deaths from all causes. But in 1890 the proportion was only 53.7. The death rate due to accidents and injuries is highest among persons forty-five years old and over. The average age of death from accidents is about thirty-three and one-half years. The warmer months show a larger proportion of fatal accidents than the cooler ones. . . . On the whole, nearly six per cent of all deaths in the United States are due to accidental injuries. On the average, persons are twice as likely to die from accident as from old age. The number of railroad and trolley accidents is increasing constantly.”

The use of stimulants and narcotics, which to a greater or lesser degree paralyze the brain faculties, is likewise increasing constantly, and between these two facts there may be, and we believe there is, a direct relationship.