The Palatka news and advertiser., 1915-07-30
Fake Situation.

In these modern, strenuous days
many splendid movements for the
body or soul uplift of mankind in gen.
eral or in particular, degenerate to the
level of fads. The moral influence is
excellent on the amateur faddist, for
he, or she, imagines that he, or she,
is really useful in this much demor-
allied world, but on the victim the
result is damaging.
The magnificent ideas involved in
the prison reform movement, or in
the reform of the prison, have been
perverted to the serious injury of the
prisoner himself by these short-sight-
cd enthusiasts.
The doctors have been preaching
for years from the text of lower sick
and death rates from better sanitary
personality and surroundings. Fakirs
have used the word sanitary to ad-
vertise their wares and the people
have believed and have bought-in
short, they have been "stung." Clean
! ly people have absorbed the idea that
such things have virtue in them be-
cause the manufacturers say they
have, they pay their good money and
CO11SluGT lllcHlSelNSS Sdlcs
No one can be absolutely safe from
Iccntract with disease outside vacuum
glass case, fed with steriliHzed air
and iocG and drink. We know there
are certain disease organism a.wavs
IN the air, at some time noe than
others, and it is the resisting power
of the individual that enables him to
fight successfully their attacks. This
is illustrated by the many-times
repeated occurrence in which two per-
sons are alike exposed to pneumonia
or other disease. One with low re-
sisting power gets it. The other es-
capes because of his resisting power.
due to good health and high phyical
condition.
In other words, the best protection
Of the individual from disease is in
his resisting power. This is attain
ed and preserved by personal cleanli-
ness, by vigorous, elastic physical
condition which comes from an alb
sence of worry and overwork, backed
by clean surroundings and personali-
ty. The man who gets up in the
morning tired and unrested by sleep,
is an easier victim to disease than
the man who is ready to fight as soon
as he gets into his clothes.
While health teachers by no means
deprecate or depreciate the value of
caution, of real sanitary precaution,
into which people work themselves by
cnstant apprehension of disease that |
makes life burden and robs them of
the highest enjoyment of the desira-
BILE things that the Almighty put into
the world for US all to enjoy. There |
is vast distinction between indiffer-
ence and overcaution about sanitary |
matters, and one is almost as harm
full as the other. The middle ground |
between is what the sanitarian wants
to teach and reach. He wants to
warn against the numerous fake de-
vices which, misusing the word sanl
tarv, are constructed mainly for the
purpose of separating the public from
its money.
In a certain Florida town is a dairy
that has built up a large business by
itself as "the sanitary
dairy" An inspection showed it to
be one of the filthiest places in the
state or country. Sanitary" bread
or pie or meat, is usually no better
than the kind that is sold without
that adjective.
In nothing is the public gulled more
than by the so-called min
eral or spring waters. Bacterioligi
cally most of these are shown by
chemical analysis to be much more
h q rn, fuI than tha arteSian waters with i