Science has metamorphosed the very mode of our daily life. Science has stepped up the tempo of life; it has widened the range of our occupations, extended immensely the limits of our curiosity, it has increased the ways of utilising our leisure ; it has given us comforts and amenities undreamt of by our forefathers. Yet science is now the handmaiden of a privileged few who can purchase the service.

As regards our food, science has given us correct ideas of nutritive and calorie value of the food that we take. It has analysed and classified the various constituents of our diet according to vitamin content, caloric value, mineral basis etc. It has explained to us the factors that make a balanced diet. With the help of all this knowledge, the State can provide schoolchildren with cheap but nutritive food in order to build up the physique of future generations. This shows how much science can contribute to the improvement of national well-being. Science even has started producing synthetic food in the Laboratory, to supplement our food deficit.

Next item of our necessity is our dress. Modern science has taught us the utility of light dress in a tropical country. Our knowledge of science has helped up to manufacture dress materials more comfortable, more enduring and in the long run more economi­cal and adjusted to the prevailing environment. Today we are certainly better clothed than ever before.

Also science has shown us how we can do a greater volume of work in shorter time and with less physical strain and sweat. It has placed at our disposal innumerable labour-saving devices, so that, life can become far less difficult than it is.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Electric light and fan have made home-life more comfortable today. The typewriter, the computer, washing machine, the telephone, the motor car, refrigerator,-all these and many others show how much work we can do with minimum labour. They save us from the drudgery of manual work to recuperate and thus enable us to do much more work with greater output than our ancestors. At the same time, scientific process creates plenty of leisure, which we may devote to cultural pursuits. The modern man is thus able to live a fuller and many-sided life.

In our sickness, we feel more than ever the benefits of science. The physician and the surgeon are today much more sure in their diagnosis of diseases through clinical tests, brain scanning and supersonic devices. The physicians are now more confident in their ability to cure or to control them.

The microscope, the X-ray, the radium, ultra sonography—all these have come as real blessings to humanity. With the growth of chemical and bacteriological sciences, the treatment of diseases has been very much sophisticated and yet simplified. Wonder drugs like penicillin and streptomycin and other anti-biotics have proved specific medicines in the cure of diseases, which were formerly intractable.

Allied to this is the contribution that science has made to our ideas of sanitation and hygiene. Infectious diseases have been either completely eradicated, or brought under control, due to better sanitation and sewerage arrangements. Cholera, smallpox typhoids, aids and the like epidemic diseases have been largely tamed.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Other killing ailments like TB, Cancer, Coronary attacks are also consid­erably subdued, thanks to wonderful progress in medical research. Dysentery, typhoid etc. have ceased in countries, which believe in science and make its full use. Epidemic malaria has greatly been diminished. As a result of all these, the average expectation of human life has almost doubled in the last hundred years.

The services of science in providing us with cheap and innocent amusements are equally great. The radio, the television the cinema has helped to soothe our over-strained nerves with music and with means of refreshment and recreation. Equally delightful are the gramophone and cassette players. Outside home, we can drop in at a cinema-house and escape for a time from the worries of life. Even the theatre is something infinitely superior to what is used to be in the days of yatra. With the help of scientific devices of light focusing and the revolving stage, it is able to imitate, more convincingly, the realities of life.

Thus in our daily life science has been of the greatest help and benefits us in a variety of ways. It is difficult to say how much we owe to science in the affairs of our daily life. From morning to midnight we are served tirelessly by science and scientific devices.