“All right; I give in. What else?”
“Education, education, education; always education of the public, till the last flame is stamped out. Get the press, first; that is the most direct and far-reaching agency. Then organize public meetings, lectures, addresses in churches and Sunday schools, talks wherever you can get people together to listen. That is what I’d do.”
“Go ahead and do it, then.”
“Easily said,” smiled the Health Master. “Who am I, to practice what I preach?”
“Provisional Health Officer of Worthington,” came the quick answer. “I have the Mayor’s assurance that he will appoint you to-morrow if you will take the job.”
“I’ll do it,” said the Health Master, blinking a little with the suddenness of the announcement, but speaking unhesitatingly, “on two conditions: open schools and free anti-toxin.”
“I’ll get that arranged with the Mayor. Meantime, you have unlimited leave of absence as Chinese physician to the Clyde household.”
“But the Household Protective Association will have to back me,” said Dr. Strong, as the meeting broke up. “I can’t get along without you.”
Swiftly and terribly moves an epidemic, once it has gained headway. And silence and concealment had fostered this onset from the first. Despite the best efforts of the new Health Officer, within a week the streets of the city were abloom with the malign flower of the scarlet for diphtheria and the yellow for measles.
“First we must find out where we stand,” Dr. Strong told his subordinates; and, enlisting the services of the great body of physicians,—there is no other class of men so trained and inspired to altruistic public service as the medical profession,—he instituted a house-to-house search for hidden or undiscovered cases. From the best among his volunteers he chose a body of auxiliary school inspectors, one for every school, whom he held to their daily régime with military rigor.