Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-07-08
NO PIED PIPER OF DEATH

| TT WAS wise precaution of Health
| Il Director Krusen to warn against panic
fear of an epidemic on the appearance
of two cases of infantile paralysis at the
same time that he took every measure to
combat possible epidemic. Nothing can
be accomplished in blue funk, and to
prevent such a state Of mind every single
citizen can help by informing himself as
| to every detail of authorized advice on
preventive sanitation and enforcing with
tenfold care all rules for personal and
neighborhood cleanliness.
They are to be envled, perhaps, who
can take their children away from cities
today or tomorrow, but they are to be
sharply reminded that undue haste in
transporting young children on trains to
distance is in itself a peril, seeing that
food can never be so safe, surroundings
and clothing never so clean, during i'm.
properly planned travel as at home.
Again, country or seashore resorts rarely
have the effectively organized health de-
partments of great cities, and now that
sporadic cases of the malady have ap-
peared in all directions there Is no con-
vincing proof that fight is the wisest
policy
There is no cause for alarm in the fact
that Director Krusen and his chief med.
ical inspector, Doctor Cairns, disagree as
to the danger, since virtually nothing Is
known about the disease and no two
physicians think alike about It. 1t Is in
fectious, says Doctor Krusen, and there
is great danger of one child contracting 1t
from another. 1t is only mildly conta-
gious, il at all, says Doctor Cairns. But
he is working with his chief and has
studied the methods of dealing with the
epidemic in New York, where there have
been 1877 deaths and 797 little sufferers.
But there is certainly no consolation in
the fact that this Is a mysterious malady
with no known cause or cure. The very
reason that Doctor Cairns gives for dis
counting anxiety prompts precaution. He
points to the fact that In 1910, when
Philadelphia had 1855 cases of infantile
paralysis, there were more than that
number of children exposed to the dis
ease and only one per cent. of those
exposed contracted it. That one per
cent. was. humanity speaking, one child
in a hundred children; that one child was
anybody's child, and anybody's child Is
a precious and actual fact to anybody
that is to say, everybody. The bringing
home to US of a touch OF New York's
terrible scourge, which is kindest when
It kills and when It spares leaves insdious
weakness or dangling, impotent little
limbs-this is enough to unite in keenly
sympathetic neighborliness all families
IfeNt, SNs
wealth and station and fill up over night
the CULTS between class and class.
1t is we'll for Philadelphia that her con.
scousness is awakened to the formidable
task of loosening up the awful pressure
OF her congested districts with more play
grounds. A quarter of a million dollars
has just been appropriated for this
Would that twenty times that sum were
available! 1t is these districts that breed
infantile paralysis and all other child dis
eases, which. when they gather momen.
tum, go surging up through all strata
of society from hovel to mansion. A med
ical authority declares his belief that
the horse fly carries the germ. A dead
horse lay for days near that congested
district in Brooklyn where New York's
epidemic started. Dead dogs and cats lie
in the street this day in Philadelphia
where children, who must play. must |
needs play amid reeking rubbish-if, in
deed. that can be called play which is the |
kicking about of a tin can from gutter |
to car track, where the motorman's heart |
is in his mouth as he cleaves swarms OF |
shrieking little citizens who do not know |
they are sick. Mysterious as infantile |
paralysis may be, there is one prophecy a
layman can safely make: that If there are
more cases of 1t here the great majority
OF them will be In such dirtinfested
as these. For the children
there are already sick, in the sense of the
word sick" as 1t is used by the we'll
to-do. Paleness. poor appetite. listless-
ness, nerves." morbldness OF mind and
body-any one of these brings the doc
tor to the nursery of the well-to-do.
They are the normal" conditions OF the
tenement children.
The city cannot stop with the estab-
of the new Fairgrounds: there
must be still more. Also, 1t must begin
TO think at once of other methods of
abolishing that menace of semi-sickness
which the lack of change of air and scene
keeps hanging over US. Eventually IL
must on a grand scale cooperate in or
take over entirely that work which is
done by the Children's Country Week
II must plan a wholesale
summer exodus 10 country and shore
to rehabilitate children who suffer not
from hunger. but from something worse.
inability TO get hungry.
Stand at the schoolhouse gate and see
500 little boys and girls come trooping
out into the street. They are Philadel-
phia-the Philadelphia that young men
viii see in their middle-age. middle-aged
men see in their old age. They are the
future eitizenry. And the Pied Piper with
his terrible music is ever ready TO spirit
them away as easily as vermin.