Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-07-31
FOOD THEY ETITRd2 BTIdR OR
AMAZING BUT RARELY SUSPECTED
TRUTHS ABOUT THE THINGS YOU EAT
XfTed sr'n ~ Mecanny eeaSa yy By ALFRED W. McCANN

estimating the number of residents in
the city runs through all the compu--
tations of the health department based
thereon, and obviously renders the re-
suits of no value for the purposes for
which they are used"
The actual death rate in New York
was approximately 1874, not 11.56. The
cheering figures when analyzed lose
their comforting significance. Now let
us see what the actual facts indicate.
cate.
One does not have to go back fifty
years to witness the typhoid epidemics
that swept over the country, now a
curse almost of the past.
Yellow fever counted it's victims by
the thousands, while smallpox kept
pace with this dread disease as a
slaughterer of men.
When appendicitis, most of the VIC
Tins of which are now saved through a
better understanding of the nature of
the disease and its treatm ent, seized
upon its victims those victims died,
while all the deaths were recorded
against the mysterious and meaning
less but convenient phrase "intiamma-
ton of the bowels
Surgery knew little of the use of
antiseptics, so when men were cut,
wounded or bruised, gangrene, blood
poisoning or tetanus fought for their
lives.
Commissions of infants and cholera
infantum destroyed hundreds of thou
sands. Child-bed fever, due to infec-
ton through ignorance of asepsis at
birth, was nightmare in every COM
munity.
Skilled physicians and surgeons were
not plentiful, nor were their services
easily obtained Puerperal hemor-
Thage, other accidents of labor, and
perperal septicemia were common.
1t was not so long ago when piles
of garbage, filth and decay were to be
seen lying in the camps, -hamlets, viii
lagos, towns and cities of the entire
country.
To-day every town has it's health
officer and every city its health depart
ment. AS much money is spent on
health departments in the United
States to-day as is spent upon edu-
cation.
In the year 1914 for the city of New
York alone $3,534,240 was appro-
priated for such current expenses.
There was little army of 3,421 on the
health department payroll watching
over the sanitary conditions of floating
baths, stationarypools bathing beaches,
tents, camps, bungalows and cases of
infectious diseases, regulating the pro-
duction and sale of milk, looking after
the handling, storing and sale Of food
in stores, factories, hotels and restau-
rants, promoting the progress of in
dustrial hygiene, regulating public
laundries, disinfecting passenger cars
and omnibuses, requiring the removal
of harmful gases from workrooms,
requiring the owners of marsh lands
and sunken lots to fill in or drain them
to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes,
and providing for the sanitation, ven
tilation and lighting of theaters, re-
quiring institutions and private ply
sicians to report cases of venereal dis
ease, requiring the report of occupa-
tional diseases and injuries, requiring
physicians and superintendents of hos
pitals to report groups of cases of sus-
pected food poisoning, prohibiting per-
sons suffering from communicable dis
eases from working in their homes on
articles intended for general consump-
ton, regulating the free distribution
of vaccines, antitoXins, serums and
cultures, supervising contagious dis
ease hospitals, investigating tubercu-
losis clinics and discharged sanatoriun
cases, regulating the operation of
slaughter houses and the disposal of
their offal, preventing the use of the
common drinking cup and the COM
mon towel, ETC., etc.