The Palatka news and advertiser. [volume] (Palatka, Fla.) 1908-19??, 1915-06-25
highest quality and his craftsmanship
remarkable for its plain, homely
sense.-Philadelphia Press.
Florida Fighting tuberculosis.

Florida Fighting tuberculosis.
Knowing how, will prolong many
lives and will save many more.
In other words, ignorance is cost
ing Florida each year a heavy toll in
! human life and in sickness that
might be prevented. There can be
no deeper regret over the death If
loved one than the knowledge -,
when it is too late-that it was I'M
necessary, that it might have been
prevented.
AS everywhere else, so in Florida,
little ailments, seemingly trifing
sicknesses are neglected with the eX-
pectation that they will "wear off" in
a few days, or they are treated by
Mother" who seems to diagnose by
instinct every physical disarrange-
ment in her family and who has an
"unfailing remedy" for it, inherited
from several generations back or ac-
cumulated from her own experiences
or from those of her neighboring
housewives. But the time comes
when instinct is sidetracked and real
trouble comes. 1t comes to every
family sooner or later and it often
becomes serious-far oftener than is
|necessary-from plain, everyday ig-
norance.
No disease in these modern days is
more insidious, more stealthy in its
approach than tuberculosis, and none
lis more dangerous both to the victim
and to those who are in intimate daily
association with him. Consumption,
as pulmonary tuberculosis used to be
called, is not an incurable disease if
it is recognized soon enough. Indeed,
high medical authority declares that
one American in every seven bears the
scar marks of the disease on lung
tissue from an encounter at some time
in his life with the white plague"
Some recover, some don't.
And so ignorance is the danger,
for when the disease has progressed
far enough for the unprofessional
mind to suspect the truth, the time
of the funeral is not far away.
Beginning with July of this good
year, 1915, six splendidly qualified
nurses will undertake, under the di-
rection of the State Board of Health,
a wonderful work among the people
of Florida. Starting from six widely
separated centers OF population, they
will go into each community, particu-
larly into the smaller cities and the
rural districts, to do what they can
to arouse the people to the impor-
lance of this fight against tuberculo-
sis. They will search out, so far as
is humanity possible, the sufferers
from this disease. They will enlist
the services of the regular practition-
ers where new cases shall be discov-
cred. They will urge the open-air
best in the world
and the cheapest-for those who can
not avail themselves of the costly san
itarium. They will show the patient
and his family how to reduce to a
minimum the danger of spreading
the infection. Their services-those
of these six Florida nurses, who are
far more than nurses in their rcspon-
be free-free as saliva
ton, to be had for the taking-to all
the people of this great state, white
and black.
1t cannot be expected that their
work will be confined to the study of
the tuberculosis problem. In the con-
ditions they will find and in which
they must work, they must advise for
better sanitation and cleaner sur
roundings; they will be consulted
about ailments and they will be pre-
pared to advise wisely and we'll.
Of course. each of these women (all
but one) will have more than one
hundred thousand Floridians in her
jurisdiction, and that one will have
to cover the east coast from Daytona
to Key West, and the progress of each
will be slow. There
should be a hundred of them, and
would be none too many, but
the work of education by personal
contact with the people of Florida
with these six splendidly trained wo-
men, will be a Godsend to hundreds
and thousands of men and women
State Board of Health Bulletin.