Illustrated lectures followed by literature are of inestimable value if rightly and not sensationally given. Even then, the seed must have time to sprout.
Man has reached his present stage of civilization, however we regard it, by an incessant warfare against adverse conditions. Enemies, man and beast, surrounded him; mountains and rivers obstructed his passage; fire and flood swept away his dwellings; but ever onward the inward impulse has carried him.
It is interesting to see how the same vocabulary is transferred to the warfare for social betterment, “campaign,” “warfare,” “battle,” “fight,” “weapon,” “corps,” “army.” And the fight to be won can only come through knowledge, its dissemination and then its application.
Publicity today means coöperation and democracy—all to help, all to be helped.
All the foregoing methods should be used in these campaigns for health, with the dictum, “Man, know thyself.”
CHAPTER VIII
Both child and adult to be protected from their own ignorance. Educative value of law and of fines for disobedience. Compulsory sanitation by municipal, state, and federal regulations. Instructive inspection.
The strength of the State is the sum of all the effective people.
Dr. Edward Jarvis, Massachusetts State Board of Health, 1874.
When the Americans took charge of Bilibid Prison in Manila the death rate was 238 per 1,000 per year: by improving sanitary conditions, this death rate was reduced to about 75 per 1,000: here it remained stationary until it was discovered that a very high percentage of the prisoners were infected with hookworms and other intestinal parasites: then a systematic campaign was inaugurated to expel these worms, and when this was done the death rate fell to 13.5 per 1,000.