It is no disgrace to an individual or a city to have the national laboratory make discoveries, to have the national power put down epidemics, as it does civil rebellion, for the good of the whole nation. It is disgraceful, however, for the citizen to remain indifferent or obstructive, to grumble over the cost. The indifference of the people themselves is today almost the only stumbling block to national prosperity.
The time lost to the average worker by inefficient labor is a drain on the community largely avoidable, and is the cause of that other drain on the moral as well as physical vitality—charity.
Preventive medicine is a science by itself, a combination of social and scientific forces guided by research quickly applied, and it must be accepted and upheld by those whom it benefits, namely, all the citizens. The nation is in many cases the only power strong enough to command confidence, and in the combination of government effort an international science of human welfare is bound to be evolved.
It is a waste of effort for each state to prepare a fly pamphlet. The correctness of a Government Bulletin would give an added value as well as the rapidity of circulation. The bulletins of the Agricultural Department are an example.
The Weather Service, with its quick notifications, shows what a health service might do. A monthly or weekly health chart would give the best and worst spots.
Precautions really workable might be furnished the Associated Press.
In short, system and science might be put at the service of the local health officer, of the traveler, and even of the housewife.
The Library of Congress now furnishes cards in duplicate to a large number of centers, thus saving time to the investigator and giving information often not otherwise obtainable.
The Farmers’ Bulletins of the Department of Agriculture are also most valuable to the people who are in search of help. Such agencies might be extended without fear of trespass on any existing agencies.
Just as the individual, if he is to do and be his best, accepts his limitations, obeys Nature’s law, and thrives in body and estate in consequence, and as the community banding together makes and carries out with penalties for deviation certain regulations for mutual benefit, so must the still larger groups—the state and the nation—use their larger wisdom and wider knowledge for the benefit of all. The individual should recognize the value to himself of this more complete investigation, and instead of raising the cry of paternalism and national interference, should welcome all aids to increased efficiency.