The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1916-03-13
FIoRmA's HEALTH CONDITIONS
Board Of Health Bulletin.)

has better conditions, natural or
artificial, favoring health, low sick
and death rates and longevity than
Florida.
No place on earth is ideal. and
not even the most adent lovers of
this great southern peninsula will
admit that it has no drawbacks
! for perfection is not really to be ex-
pected' this side the Pearly Gates,
but in Florida the expectancy of
good, healthy working efficiency is at
least equal to the expectancy of
bright, sunshiny days and invigorat-
| ing breathable air.
big asset of Florida is climate
so much advertised that jealous
neighbors have seriously declared
that it is really her only resource.
But it is a condition of clear air,
saturated with the salt of the sur
rounding oceans, with a tempera-
ture that encourages our-of-doors
living all the year round. 1t gives
an advantage of untold, unreliable
value over the sections where lower
temperatures demand an indoor ex-
istence through many months of the
year. Vigorous men and women love
outdoors and that's exactly why
Florida is thronged today and in this
particular winter season with great
er numbers of northern visitors
probably than ever before in her
history
But climate is not the only re-
source favoring health. 1t is easy,
very easy, to forfeit this advantage
by neglect of the laws that govern
the transmission of disease, and
ignorance of these laws does not
avert the results Of their fracture.
Within the last few years-two
or three this state has walked up
to the commercial advantages of
good roads and within the fifty odd
countries she is spending almost six
million dollars in their construction.
More than twenty-five years ago
she walked up to the commercial adj
vantages Of good health, and under
the authority of the Legislature of
1889 and of subsequent GATHERINGS
of the solons at Tallahassee she has
been sDending a half-mill tax on all
the accessible property in the State, |
to secure and to preserve it,
1t is fact that no state is better !
equipped today, as result of this !
wise decision back in the sos to /,
combat disease directly and through |
the education of the people to a |
how to obtain this ad- |
for themselves by better
and better living. 1t is
quite within the remembrance of |
young men that the announcement of
yellow fever in any Florida city
brought shudder through all the
state. and it's nearer approach to any
given locality crowded the trains
with refugees to the North Now
such an alarm would be answered /
with reference to the State Board
Of Health. But such alarms don't
come any more, for this disease and
others have banished and their COM
ing made as impossible as human
and foresight can make
anything impossible
Experts alert and in closest touch
with the constant advances of med
cal sciences, are in charge of health
situation. They are backed by the
of the state, with supreme
in emergencies, they are
equipped with laboratories in widely
scattered parts of the state for the
study of disease in the individual
md in epidemic-it is a condition of
preparedness that has for years pre-
rented the necessity of war.
The education Of the people of
Florida to better knowledge of
heir physical selves of the laws of
health and sanitation, has been one
If the efficient weapons in the fight
against disease invasion and epidem-
c. And the most recent addition
o this educational equipment is the
Iealth Train, now on its initial
Journey through the state The
hree remodeled Pullmans. with their
panels and models and steromotor-
yraphs and literature in charge of
thoroughly competent representa-
ives of the Board of Health, have
,een thronged with people earnestly
'acer to learn. These people have
'eturned to learn more. they have
brought the school children and
heir live interest shows the edu-
value of this travelling
chool.
If 1t be really fact that in knowl-
'dge is power, the people of Florida /
AVE within their reach the facili- &
los for hecopino moro opd mara =