Suicides are increasing and now reach the enormous total of about 15,000 annually.
Lynchings and burnings-at-the-stake continue, and are common only to our country.
Attempts upon human life by individuals and mobs under trifling provocation, or none at all, are obviously increasing.
Over 9,000 murders are committed every year, and it is estimated that but an average of 116 murderers are executed for these crimes. We have the appalling estimated homicide record of over 100 per million population as against 7 in Canada, 9 in Great Britain and 15 in Italy.
In the United States the death rate above age 40 has increased steadily for years (about 27 per cent. since 1880), while it has remained virtually stationary in England and Wales.
The important organs of the body are wearing out too soon—the diseases of old age are reaching down into the younger age periods.
The death rate from the degenerate diseases of the heart, blood vessels and kidneys, including apoplexy, has increased over 100 per cent. since 1880. These diseases claim over 350,000 lives annually.
The doctors tell us that fully 60 per cent. of these deaths are preventable or postponable if the disease is discovered in time.
Periodical health examinations would detect these chronic diseases in time to check or cure them, but aside from the efforts of the Equitable Life Assurance Society and another smaller company, no public campaign to educate our people to this vital need is being carried on.
All of our money, all of our energy, seem to be directed against diseases that can be communicated. Is not a life lost from Bright’s disease as valuable as one lost by typhoid fever?