Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1913-09-26

munlty. The reason is that system
attic health protection work in the
United States is largely confined to
the big cities.
In many states the large cities are
the only points which have any real
sanitary protection. Our rural popu-
lation of 49,000,OO0 people, includ-
ing the 100000 who live on
farms, with the exception of those
fortunate rural dwellers in one or
two exceptional states which regard
the health of the country people as
also important, receive very little
state health protection and maintain
no local protective system of their
own against contaminated local milk.
meat shell fish, fish or vegetables.
Moreover, only a small number of
these rural inhabitants are safe
guarded, by competent inspection,
against polluted water supply or
sewage disposal methods dangerous
to health and life.
To this rural and unprotected
population we can add the bulk of
the 100000 people who live in
towns, cities and suburbs of less than
10000 inhabitants, excepting those
here and there who happen to dwell
in the more progressive towns, or in
those few hamlets located in the eX-
ceptional states that have already
awakened to the Importance of rural
sanitation. If we wished we could
go even further and add the popula-
tons of many cities of $4,000 or so
600 people which maintain no health
officers; and of those cities which
have health officers but so cripple
them with poor laws or ordinances,
or with insufficient funds, as to
make their food inspection work
most ineffective. | mean cities, for
example, where boards of health are
practically powerless under the law
to seize milk except when it is actu-
ally Watered or skinned. These
health officers must look on help
lessly while milkmen send milk so
dlrty, or from such dangerous, dis
ease-breeding places, as to make it a
menace to the consumer. To prevent
this deplorable condition it is abso-
lutely necessary that uniform stand
ards of meteorological cleanliness as
we'll as chemical composition be es-
tablished. archaeological control is
absolutely necessary to prevent the
spread of contagion.
The probability, therefore, is that
here are upward of 70,00O,GOO out
OF our 81, 100000 people who have
no efficient and systematic protec-
| ton from the major causes of the
| spread of typhoid, tuber ,ulosis, dead
ly intestinal diseases of infants, scar
| let fever, septic sore throat, trichi-
nosis, and other ailments resulting
from the circulation of disease pro
ducing organisms.
| We must not let ourselves be
| blinded by statistics, for the statis-
tics Of disease in the United States
are VIGOROUSLY unreliable. For GER
tain sections no attempt whatever is
made to collect them. | need not
tell an audience such as this that
reliable statistics are the basis of all
health protection. Until severe pen
tlties are inflicted for failure to re-
ort cases of. infectious diseases, un-
til failure to do so results in the
cancellation of the license to prac-
tice medicine there will be no really
reliable statistics. And this will
only be brought about when the
state health services throughout the
land furnish a permanent career for
life instead Of being, as they are but
too often at present, a slde-line OF
politics-medical or otherwise. And
these services should furnish a
career, like the federal civil service,
to sanitary engineers and chemists
as well as to physicians. The people
must learn that their health is too
valuable to entrust to temporary
health officers or to physicians who
devote to the discharge of their
duties as health officers, only such
irregular moments as can be spared
from their private practices.
Rural Death Statistics Inaccurate
The sections of the country in
which, as already stated, little or nc
attention is paid to keeping records
of disease are rural. The large
cities keep some sort of rec
ord because attention to health pro-
lection and to easily contaminated
foods is centralized almost wholly in
the cities. With rare exceptions the
effectiveness of the protective work
depends on the individual city
rather than on a statewide law OF
A state wide and efficient health in