CHAPTER III[ToC]
WHAT HEALTH RIGHTS ARE NOT ENFORCED IN YOUR COMMUNITY?
Laws define rights. Men enforce them. For definitions we go to books. For record of enforcement we go to acts and to conditions.[3] What health rights a community pretends to enforce will, as a rule, be found in its health code. What health rights are actually enforced can be learned only by studying both the people who are to be protected and the conditions in which these people live. A street, a cellar, a milk shop, a sick baby, or an adult consumptive tells more honestly the story of health rights enforced and health rights unenforced than either sanitary code or sanitary squad. Not until we turn our attention from definition and official to things done and dangers remaining can we learn the health progress and health needs of any city or state.
The health code of one city looks very much like the health code of every other city. This is natural because those who write health codes generally copy other codes. Even small cities are given complicated sanitary legislative powers by state legislatures. Therefore those who judge a community's health rights by its health laws will get as erroneous an impression as those who judge hygiene instruction in our public schools from printed statements about the frequency and character of such instruction. Advocates of health codes have thought the battle won when boards of health were given almost unlimited power to abate nuisances and told how to exercise those powers.
A DAIRY INSPECTOR'S OUTFIT