A WAR WORTH WAGING
THE SUCCESSFUL FIGHT TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF NEW YORK CITY
(AVERAGE LIFE IN 1866, THIRTY YEARS; IN 1912, SIXTY-SIX YEARS. DEATH-RATE IN 1866, 34 PER THOUSAND; IN 1912, 14.11 PER THOUSAND)
BY RICHARD BARRY
PROFESSOR FISHER, of the Committee of One Hundred appointed to consider the problem of the national health, was laboring with Senator Works of California, the official representative in Washington of the Christian Scientists.
“Your approval, Senator,” he said, “of such measures as clean streets and playgrounds is really an indorsement of preventive medicine.”
“But,” exclaimed Senator Works, “I did not know you meant those things as being preventive medicine. I thought preventive medicine meant serums.”
“No,” said Professor Fisher, laughing; “it means mosquito-bars and bath-tubs.”
It is not only serums and bacteriology, but mosquito-bars and bath-tubs, clean streets and plenty of sewers, together with an efficient organization to perfect the operation of such things, that have revolutionized the conditions of health in New York City.
Consider what has been done for poor children alone. Recently I stood in one of the fifty-five diet-kitchens maintained by the city. A poor woman of the neighborhood entered, carrying in her arms a sickly baby. Evidently familiar with the proper course of procedure, she said to the nurse in charge, “I have given him castor-oil and barley gruel; now what shall I do?” This incident is remarkable because the woman never before had come within the reach of the Health Department. In the danger that menaced the child, she had learned to take the first essential steps not through experience or instruction, but merely through neighborhood gossip.