Many startling statements are set forth in the document. Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, of the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Services, declares that "The United States is seven times dirtier than Germany and ten times as unclean as Switzerland." He declares that: "Lack of interest in preventive measures against diseases is slaughtering the human race." He takes the position that the real trouble is not so much race suicide as race slaughter, and that it is rather that too many children are allowed to die than that not enough children are born.
It is estimated that tuberculosis, a preventable disease, costs the nations $1,000,000,000 annually. Typhoid fever is estimated by Dr. George M. Kober, dean of the medical department of Georgetown University, to cost over $300,000,000 annually.
In connection with acute diseases this statement is made: "The loss from tuberculosis has been reduced to half of what it was thirty years ago. Nevertheless, of the 90,000,000 people now living in the United States at least 5,000,000 will be lost through this disease because adequate effort is not made to prevent it. Besides the economic waste through deaths from any disease, the waste through sickness from the same disease is also colossal."
Great as are the reductions in the rates of infant mortality by improved milk and water supplies and by educational campaigns, the present rate is still enormous.
"If some witch or wizard could conjure up the unnecessary babies' funerals annually occurring in this country it would be found that the little hearses would reach from New York to Chicago. If we should add the mourning mothers and friends, it would make a cortége extending across the continent."
While the death rates from acute diseases have been greatly reduced, the rates from chronic diseases have been steadily increasing. Cancer is one of the chronic diseases apparently on the increase.
That the annual death toll and the 3,000,000 constant sick beds could be reduced from one-fourth to one-half by proper measures is asserted. In other words, there might be saved every day, as many lives as perished on the Titanic, with the consequent enormous economic saving.
These are surely impressive statements. It would seem as though it should be a simple task to pass a Public Health Bill, establishing a bureau in Washington, with a representative in the cabinet, whose sole duty it would be to preserve the public health. It has proved rather the reverse, however. We have been able to inaugurate various species of conservation,—of lands, of forests, of water,—but the conservation of human life is not important enough. Even though states and empires depend upon their people for their very existence, our statesmen feel that human life is too cheap, too common, to take immediate steps in this direction.
If women—especially mothers—would devote