The sun., 1919-11-02

| next and little district of Paris
| fourth) I ordered no procedure of the
| sort. For this / was criticised.
MY feeling was that In a city SO
congested It would be absurd to try to
| keep people out of crowds. The great
est Of all crowds here are on the trans
portation lines. On these we stag
gered' the traffic, changing the hours
of beginning work and ending it SO
| that crowds going and coming would
| be lessened. 1t would be difficult to
find any public gathering place more
crowded than are many of New YorlS's
tenement house homes during the
hours when the children are not at
school and the adults are not at work.
And 1t would be impossible to find
public gathering places as unsanitary
as these homes In NeV York city
are a million school children. 700, 900
of whom live in tenement house homes,
These were far better of in school
than in those homes.
MY insistence was that the children
while at school should be kept out of
yards and Easements; that when one
was found showing any symptom OF
infection he or she should be sent
home at once, guarded by q repre-
sentative OF the Board of Health. In
| the meantime we paid such attention
az never before to the ventilation of
school rooms and gave the same
thought to the same subject with re-
gard to theatres. Indeed We found
the moving picture theatre one of the
most useful Health Board adjuncts.
Instead OF closing such places of
amusement we kept them open and
we'll ventilated and used them for
propaganda of prevention.
Through them we educated thou
sands in simple methods Of prevention.
We threw propaganda on the screens
and every evening some employee OF
the management in each such place OF
amusement gave the audience gath
cred there brief talk. prepared for
him by the Board of Health, and eluci-
dating some of the simpler preven-
tive measures which might terd to
save the auditors from becoming vic
tins of the epidemic
Anti-Cough Education.
Thus, and in other ways, we con-
Quoted an immensely useful course of
education against coughing, sneezing
and splitting. Because l followed this
plan of procedure there were many
who criticised me, saying that the
Commissioner fails to realize that
there is an epidemic / did not. !
could not. At one cemetery which l
visited there were new graves in prac-
tically every lot and 750 victims lying
unburied at the moment, yet New
York's death rate from Influenza re-
mained the lowest in the country.
II have mentioned the meagre
| fruits OF our study of prevention. So
far as treatment is concerned the first
thing TO make sure OF Is the quaran-
tine Of all patients ana suspects. That
is for the protection OF the unaffected.
The most important step for the per-
son who is or thinks himself infected
is that which will put him between
blankets. The best advice that can
| possibly give TO any one suspected
OF influenza infection Isl Go to bed
and call n Doctor Many of those
who died during the previous cpl
denies were the 'huskies' who thought
themselves strong enough to fight the
disease on their feet after they recog-
nized the fact that they had been in
fected. In such cases three or four
days usually brought pneumonia.
The dreadful thing about last years
epidemic was that It seemed particu-
larly to take thase of the most vita
age-from 25 to 81. Fifty per cent OF
the deaths were in that group. In this
the recent visitations OF influenza Diff
fered entirely from those which oc-
CURED in 1884 and 1890; II, indeed, 1,
was due to an Identical infection, n
claim which has not been incontro-
vertibly proved, During those vista
tions most Of the victims were very
| young or very old.
For the future we must do many
things If we as a nation wish to live
up to our claims OF high collective
ltntslligsncs. Frankly It does NOT ssso