The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-10-28


ness was visitation from on high.
This theory of the divine origin of disease per-
sists still. Somewhere in the background of
many minds turks this fallacious belief that
maladies will come in the nature of things and
must be patiently endured since they cannot in
any way be cured.
Next to the misguided fear that it
extravaganza and therefore rise in taxes this
superstition is the chief obstacle in the way of
real progress of public health When the people
understand that typhoid, scarlet fever, smallpox
measles, and tuberculosis are wholly due to in
sanitary conditions and may be wiped out of ex-
stence public health officers will have easier sail
ing and bring forth more results.
Otherwise intelligent persons will fight pub
lie health measures on the ground that they are
fads and wild theories efforts to wiring
little more money from the tax payers purse.
"Our forefathers knew nothing of sanitation
and germs and all these new tangled notions, yet
they lived longer than we and had better health
This notion is so far from the truth and does
SO much to paralyze public action in stamping out
unnecessary diseases, that it has become vicious
It simply is not true. Though'we have had vital
ity statistics of a reliable character only since
1910, careful scrutiny of older records with his
torical analyses and comparisons shows very
clearly that health has vastly improved since the
beginning of preventive medicine and public
sanitation. Lecky, that extraordinary histor-
ian, argues that sanitation the Nineteenth
century's greatest achievement.
During the long night of the Middle Ages the
death rate at one time reached such appalling
height that the average length of life fell to
eighteen years. It is now more than forty. Be-
fore modern sanitation and medicine life was so
precarious in cities that they were unable to keep
themselves going and had to recruit citizens from
country districts. The populace died off faster
than it born.
But it is not necessary to resort to the uncer-
tain testimony of Middle Age history; one can
compare cities and districts of today before and
after sanitation
There is the Panama canal region, in instance.
Everybody knows how yellow fever and scarlet
fever and malaria, ravaged the ranks of labor
ers during De Lessep's attempt to construct the
waterway that he found the alarming death rate
his greatest obstacle. Everybody will recall that
the project vigorously opposed when the u.
S. took it up on the grounds that no person could
live in the heart of those marshes. And in the
beginnings of the work it did appear as if fever
and death would prove mightier than human grit
and steam power but DR.. Gorgas went down with
trained staff of sanitarians and cleaned up the
place. Today it has lower death rate than
many northern cities
And the same thing is true of the Philippines.
White soldiers persisted in Manila at rate not
frequently made known to the public and would
today be dropping off from fever and smallpox
had not the federal sanitarians cleaned up the
town. Sanitation has made Manila a desirable
home for white as we'll as black.
1nsantation killed more Spanish-American
war soldiers than Spanish bullets Scarlet fever,
typhoid and malaria decmated the ranks more
rapidly than knives and guns A recent report
from the Second Division now stationed near Gal
weston shows for the period encamped no cases
of smallpox, or typhoid and but eighteen cases
of malaria among twelve thousand men
In 1911, with public sanitation of about the
same effectiveness the average city, Yakima
County, Washington, lost 538 by death from all
causes and had typhoid rate of 1913 per 100, 900
after one single year of thorough public SANTA
ton under an expert sanatarian it reduced its
total death to 1913 and its typhoid rate to only 6
per 100000!
During the years 1876 New York city had a
typhoid death rate of 40 per every 100000; by
1910 this reduced to IL and today it is still
further reduced to the point where almost every
case found in New York is one brought in from
the rural districts.
What has been done by adequate and thor
ought sanitation elsewhere gan be done in Rich
mond. According to Board of Health records
Richmond had 26 cases of typhoid in 1912. Dur
ing this year the record shows 10 to and includ-
ing September; if there 40 cases during the
recent epidemic, is believed the total number
during the past ten months is 80