The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1908-05-27
LECTURE ON HEALTH.
Fourteen Reynoldsville People Heard the
Lecture and Our Entire Community
Should Have Heard It.

Should Have Heard 1t.
Last Friday EVENING" DR.. J. N. Nc
Cormack, of Bowling Green, KY,
noted physician OF high standing, lee
tured In the Presbyterian church In
Dubois under the auspices Of the JEFF
ferson County Medical Society and med
ical societies OF Clearfeld and Elk coun-
ties. 1t was an able and intensely in
terestlng talk on the health condition
OF our country. Fourteen Reynoldsville
people heard the lecture and it would
have been good thing for all the
people OF Reynoldsville and community
to have heard DR.. Mccormack The
object OF the public meeting and lecture
was to inaugurate reform campaign
for better condition OF living and to
bring the doctors and laymen into
closer touch. We cannot publish the
lecture In full, but will give space to
part OF 1t, as follows:
"Your own state has only recently
been made better by the liberal appro-
priatlons made for public health work
Even yet 1t is believed that fully one
third OF the sickness and deaths which
occur here every year can and should
be prevented. You had 10,7S0 deaths
from tuberculosis last year and you now
have large tuberculosis population.
N al ~ f,r ini. Il,
are constantly confronted by the pop
ular delusion that this Is an inherited
| disease, while you should know that
even II your father and mother both
died OF it, at the most, you can only in
herit the kind OF constitution which
makes you especially liable II exposed
to 1t, and that, In spite OF inheritance,
you can no more have this disease ex-
cept by getting into your body In some
way the germs OF this disease from
previous case than you can grow corn
or wheat on one OF your rich farms
without seed.
"You had 24,47l cases ,and 3,917
deaths last year from typhoid fever.
This is not only preventable, but is
distinctly filth disease No one can
ever have typhoid fever who does not
in some way get into his or her mouth
something from the bowels or kidneys
OF some one who has it. This is not
nice thing to think or talk about, but 1t
Is so much worse to do IL that nice
people ought to think and talk about it
until they can plan to stop doing it. In
cities infected water is the most com
mon carrier OF the germs, as in Ply
mouth, Butler, Scranton and Philadel-
phia in your own state, and in hundreds
OF other instances which could be men
toned. European cities discharged
their sewage into rivers and lakes
which were the only source OF water
supply for their own and other popu-
lations, and then purified and protected
them at an expense OF billions of dol
lars. Instead OF profiting by these ex-
periences, In most sections OF this coun-
try we are rapidly converting our
streams and lakes into open sewers and
pools, seemingly blind to the complex
sanitary problems and economic burdens
we are creating for this generation and
the teeming millions to come after us.
Typhoid fever is often carried In milk,
but in small towns and country districts
it is largely carried by the ordinary
house fly, as 1t was at Chicamauga and
other military camps during the war
with Spain. You had 1880 cases and
2,43S deaths from diphtheria; 23,729
cases and 1,463 deaths from measles;
1910 cases and 577 deaths from scarlet
fever, with total OF 36, ,646 deaths from
those and other preventable diseases.
This includes 9,769 deaths OF children
from infantile diarrhea, and the ,annual
and indiscriminate killing Of babies, by
the use of dirty, adulterated or spoiled
milk, to which that OF the slaughter of
the male first-born by Herod seems in
significant, is to begin in your cities
and towns just as soon as the warm
weather sets in"