The Washington herald., 1914-03-20
ABY THE WILL of, COZ, ?
By WILLIAM 7. sEDGwICK, 30. d.
Professor Of Pubic Health. Massschustts Instituts
Z q Tcchnolory.

IrrofzsW OF Public Health. Aasaachuscts fnstituf
of TECHNOLOGY.
I 1t is just twenty-three years since
was investigating for the State Board o
Health of Massachusetts and the wate
board of the city of Lowell an cpl
demic of typhoid fever. In the courg
Iof that investigation / had occasion Il
go to tenement in which a young
woman lay dead of typhoid. 1t was ;
lpoor family, an Irish family of opera
Itives in one of the mills, and / tool
out my notebook and asked my usua
Questions as to- the case that had jus,
died, in the search. for the cause OF
death.
/ asked what drinking water she hat
used; whether she had been out oi
town; how old she was, and all tn,
questions that an ordinary board Of
health investigator. would be likely to
ask.
In the corner Of the room was an old
man, apparently doing nothing but wait
ing for the end Of life, yet listening
intently to my questions. These were
put to sister of the deceased, who was
weeping; and the old fellow sat there
listening. looking on, but saying moth
ing. Finally, prepared to put up my
note book, but out of courtesy to him
and sympathy with the stricken fam
lily, said to the old man, what do
you think that your daughter died OF
how did she get the fever"
He had been listening to all my ques-
tons about water and milk and things
of that kind, but now turned and said
almost savagely, "She died by the will
of God. sor." For him, that was the
end of it. What use to inquire about
milk and water and such things. "She
died by the will of God. sor"
That was three and twenty years ago,
and it was typical of the feeling of
mankind fifty years ago, hundred years
ago, and | have no doubt a thousand
years ago-namely, that it is useless to
inquire into the causes of disease or to
seek to ward off disease. In other
words, that disease was an infliction of
the Almighty, and that while science
might be useful in some directions, it
was useless as applied to human life
and human health.
That was the public health feeling of
the past. But about 1880 a change
came over our ideas. We found, all of
a sudden, that anthrax or malignant
pustule is due to miserable, invisible
We found tuberculosis to be
due TO another; typhoid to a third
Asiatic cholera to a fourth; lockjaw to
a fifth; diphtheria to sixth, and so on
and the period from 1880. or thereabouts,
to about 1890, was so wonderful for
these discoveries that | am in the habit
of calling it the decade of the great
discoveries"
We learned more about disease in
those few years; or, say, in the fifteen
years from 1875 to 1890. than we had
learned in 1900 years before; and i'm
we began to take up a new
point of view We did not see in every
epidemic or in every death the hand of
an outraged God, but quite often the
hand of a mistaken and unintclligent or
a foolish human being. polluting per-
haps water supply or milk supply or
air supply.
Huxley touched on this theme years
ago. He spoke OF the people in Eng
and at the time of the plague and the
great fire of 1000 or thereaboutS. To
he plague, he says. the people we're
submissive. They received the shock
n humility and with penitence, because
hey believed it to be due to their sins
,ut against the fire they were indignant
md angry. because they thought they
'aw in that an act of their enemies.
What a change has come over the
world even within the memory of men
low living. Men and women in middle
ife, even, can look back upon the time
when these earlier ideas prevailed uni
'ersally as they now prevail here and
here and in the less educated and lsss
developed parts of society and of the
world.
There has always been struggle for
xistence There has often been a strug-
lie for home. We are now embarking
Ipon a struggle for health. In fact, we
re already struggling for it; and. un-
ess am mistaken, the term ''the strug-
lie for health" will be as much house
old phrase fifty years from now as is
he term struggle for existence" fifty !
ears after Darwin and Herbert Spen-
er introduced it.
1t is tempting to dwell on the past
nd point out how in 1880 our boards of
ealth amounted to nothing or next to
othing. In the city of Boston there was !