The Republican., 1923-01-18
DEATH RATE in TUBER-
CULOSIS CUT in TWO
Maryland One of az States Lead
ing In Fight.

That Maryland is one of the forty
two States that have accepted the
provisions of the Sheppard -Towner
Act is of interest to Garrett county
in connection with the present effort
to secure public-hcalth nurses here.
The funds made available thru this
act have been doubled by State ap-
preparation and Garrett county will
probably receive from the State Bur-
eau Of Child Hygiene several hundred
dollars toward the support Of nurses.
"Has not the farm mother as much
right to medical attention in the in
terests Of the nation as her husband
to farm loan?' Thus questions a
writer of an article entitled "Shall
More of Us Live?" in Golfers of
December 18th issue. Whether we
live in the city or the country, the
writer believes this is a practical and
public question which requires our
attention and which he answers in the
following words:
The better world Of which we
dreamed in the world war will not
come to us through treaties, the in
trigues Of diplomatists or the fulmin-
ations of political dreamers, but
through the Improvement of our
bodies and minds. Progress we owe
to the advance cf sanitation and of
personal hygiene, and to pure milk,
better food, and the era of preventive
medicine with its conquest of plague,
diphtheria, typhoid and other scourges
which had devastated humanity all
through human history.
Within the last twenty years the
death rate from tuberculosis has been
cut in two. Against the "hold-outs"
Of cancer, infantile. paralysis, infuen-
"a and pneumonia, the laboratories
press an unremitting siege.
4 world without disease is hardly
more chimerical today than a world
without scourges would have been in
the eighteenth century. One step of
progress reveals only how to scale an
other. The mastery of the scourges
does not mean that we have done
anything to perfect the human ma
chine; we have only saved it from
destruction by collision or fire. We
have only cleared the field for fur
ther triumphs if we choose to have
them. We now know enough about
the human machine to realize that we
are barely on the threshold of COM
plete knowledge of its parts and
their workings.
We have the most complete labora-
tories, unsurpassed medical scientists
and hospital equipment, but we are
not delivering the goods to the people.
The perfection of the machinery of
the next generation and generations
to come-freeing them from defects
and immunizing them from disease
requires advanced maternal care and
child hygiene. The inadequacy of
rural medical service and other influ-
ences have given such backing to the
movement that it has now been rec
ognized by Congress. For farm
mothers and fathers have votes. The
new Sheppard-Tow Act made an
allotment, over period of five years,
for child and maternal welfare of
Sl,24O,0O0, or a trife more than one
cent head for all our population.
Each State matches the amount that
is received with a similar one from its
own funds. Forty-two States have
accepted the plan.
lp those blessed days before popular
suffrage, if you wanted your children
to learn how to read and write, that
was private matter for which YOU
must pay out Of your own pocket. If
you wanted to travel; build your own
cart strong enough not to break down
IN going over the rocks. If you chose
to throw your slops out of the window
it was the lookout of the passers-by
to keep an eye out for such cater
acts and to dodge them as one of the
incidents of unregulated traffic.
Diyine-right kings have passed.
Popular suffrage rules. If you have
disease that spreads infection YOU
are quarantined. If you have a NUS
ance on your premises you are hailed
to court by the police. You curse the
lack Of public spirit of community
which does not maintain good roads.
Public opinion has decided that at
the expense of the State every child
must have a common-school education.
so that he may have fair start in
life, be fitted to do his duty as a
citizen, as one of the rulers of de-
mocracy. What is the use of edu-
cation to an eufeebled body which
may mean an enfeebled mind? The
child who is backward in his studies
retards the other children. He is a
drag upon them as he will be upon