Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1916-05-04
Miss Wills Lecture
Before Federation

Wills of Boston, Mass.
Miss Wills is assistant editor Of
the Scientific Temperance Journal
and is a scientific temperance lee
turer for the education department
of the National Antl-Saloon League.
She is at present touring the state
with the social service exposition,
which was shown last week at Med
ford:
What the School Can Do to Conserve
Public Health
ITO cure was the voice Of the past;
To prevent, the divine whisper of
today"
When my father, now 76 years old,
was school boy one of the children
died of malignant scarlet fever. The
parents had public funeral attended
by all the child's schoolmates with
the result that within a very short
time there was a funeral in almost
every home in the community.
BY the time his children were in
school they no longer held public
funerals for scarlet fever victims but
tuberculosis wiped out whole fami-
lies of children, and malaria some
times infected whole communities.
A child with a little cough came
to school and within three weeks
32 of the 33 children were down with
measles (the 33rd had previously
had it, and soon there were 60 cases
in the one school district. The school
was still distributing disease.
Teeth were so sadly neglected as
they are still in Europe and many
young people actually sported arti-
ficial or gold-crowned teeth, bed
room windows were often nailed up
for the entire winter, bath tubs were
almost unknown, at least in the rural
communities and its nearest cousin,
the wash tub, was not requisitioned
in its place with anything like the
necessary frequency.
Up to 1866 there was little exact
knowledge of the nature and effects
of alcohol and other narcotics, germs
had not been discovered and there
was no thought of the schools OPP
Nportunity and duty in conserving hu-
man health and life.
By-PrOducts of Science and
Sociology
But now the hour of the new epoch
strikes. In the past we had cured,
If one could, the drunkard, the tu-
berculous or the typhoid patient; If
he died his frineds spoke of the dis
pensation of Providence and bore
their losses with what resignation
they might, but now the by-products
of science and sociology began, as
they have so often done, to yield
richer fruitage that the main prod
uct at first sought.
In France the silk worm industry
was so threatened by an infectious
disease of the worms that the French
government took the matter up, and
appointed Pasteur to search for the
remedy and after painstaking labor
he discovered that the disease was
caused by bacilli (germs) which
were communicated from one silk
worm to another and he was able to
prevent the disease.
Later he discovered the germs and
the vaccination remedy for splenic
fever in cattle and sheep, and for
hydrophobia in men. The search
for a remedy to save an industry re-
vealed the cause and so the remedy
for deadly diseases in human beings
was found.
In 1882 Koch discovered the germs
of tuberculosis, in 1890 Behring, the
anti-toxin treatment for diptheria,
and, later, we learned that mos
quitos carry germs of malaria or
yellow fever, fleas carry bubonic
plague and we swat the fly because
he loads his feet with typhoid and
other germs.
About the same time other epoch
making discoveries were made by
German investigators who began to
prove by exact experimentation that
alcohol is depressant Of muscle and
mental activity, habit-forming
drug.
Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, of
England, when a student got hold OF
this evidence of the real nature OF
alcohol, carried it across to England |
made new experiments and embodied
the results in his famous Cantor lee
lures, which presently came to Amer
lea and fell into the hands of Mrs.
Mary H. Hunt, of Boston.
Putting the Truth to Work.
She saw that although untold |