One disease has still a special claim upon the public in this country. Some fourteen or fifteen years ago, in an address on the problem of typhoid fever in the United States, I contended that the question was no longer in the hands of the profession. In season and out of season we had preached salvation from it in volumes which fill state reports, public health journals and the medical periodicals. Though much has been done, typhoid fever remains a question of grave national concern. You lost in this state[7a] in 1911 from typhoid fever 154 lives, every one sacrificed needlessly, every one a victim of neglect and incapacity. Between 1200 and 1500 persons had a slow, lingering illness. A nation of contradictions and paradoxes--a clean people, by whom personal hygiene is carefully cultivated, but it has displayed in matters of public sanitation a carelessness simply criminal: a sensible people, among whom education is more widely diffused than in any other country, supinely acquiesces in conditions often shameful beyond expression. The solution of the problem is not very difficult. What has been done elsewhere can be done here. It is not so much in the cities, though here too the death rate is still high, but in the smaller towns and rural districts, in many of which the sanitary conditions are still those of the Middle Ages. How Galen would have turned up his nose with contempt at the water supply of the capital of the Dominion of Canada, scourged so disgracefully by typhoid fever of late! There is no question that the public is awakening, but many State Boards of Health need more efficient organization, and larger appropriations. Others are models, and it is not for lack of example that many lag behind. The health officers should have special training in sanitary science and special courses leading to diplomas in public health should be given in the medical schools. Were the health of the people made a question of public and not of party policy, only a skilled expert could possibly be appointed as a public health officer, not, as is now so often the case, the man with the political pull.
[7a] Connecticut.
It is a long and tragic story in the annals of this country. That distinguished man, the first professor of physic in this University in the early years of last century, Dr. Nathan Smith, in that notable monograph on "Typhus Fever" (1824), tells how the disease had followed him in his various migrations, from 1787, when he began to practice, all through his career, and could he return this year, in some hundred and forty or one hundred and fifty families of the state he would find the same miserable tragedy which he had witnessed so often in the same heedless sacrifice of the young on the altar of ignorance and incapacity.
TUBERCULOSIS
IN a population of about one million, seventeen hundred persons died of tuberculosis in this state in the year 1911-- a reduction in thirty years of nearly 50 per cent. A generation has changed completely our outlook on one of the most terrible scourges of the race. It is simply appalling to think of the ravages of this disease in civilized communities. Before the discovery by Robert Koch of the bacillus, we were helpless and hopeless; in an Oriental fatalism we accepted with folded hands a state of affairs which use and wont had made bearable. Today, look at the contrast! We are both helpful and hopeful. Knowing the cause of the disease, knowing how it is distributed, better able to recognize the early symptoms, better able to cure a very considerable portion of all early cases, we have gradually organized an enthusiastic campaign which is certain to lead to victory. The figures I have quoted indicate how progressively the mortality is falling. Only, do not let us be disappointed if this comparatively rapid fall is not steadily maintained in the country at large. It is a long fight against a strong enemy, and at the lowest estimate it will take several generations before tuberculosis is placed at last, with leprosy and typhus, among the vanquished diseases. Education, organization, cooperation--these are the weapons of our warfare. Into details I need not enter. The work done by the National Association under the strong guidance of its secretary, Mr. Farrand, the pioneer studies of Trudeau and the optimism which he has brought into the campaign, the splendid demonstration by the New York Board of Health of what organization can do, have helped immensely in this world-wide conflict.
SOME years ago, in an address at Edinburgh, I spoke of the triple gospel which man has published--of his soul, of his goods, of his body. This third gospel, the gospel of his body, which brings man into relation with nature, has been a true evangelion, the glad tidings of the final conquest of nature by which man has redeemed thousands of his fellow men from sickness and from death.
If, in the memorable phrase of the Greek philosopher, Prodicus, "That which benefits human life is God," we may see in this new gospel a link betwixt us and the crowning race of those who eye to eye shall look on knowledge, and in whose hand nature shall be an open book--an approach to the glorious day of which Shelley sings so gloriously:
Happiness And Science dawn though late upon the earth;
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, Reason and passion cease to combat there, Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends Its all-subduing energies, and wields The sceptre of a vast dominion there. (Daemon of the World, Pt. II.)
