PerfectAllow
Schoolhouse
Well ventilated, 20; badly, 0-10 20...
Cleaned regularly, 20; irregularly, 0-10 20...
Feather duster prohibited, 10 10...
No dry sweeping, 10 10...
Has adequate play space, 10; inadequate, 0-5 10...
Has clean drinking water, 10 10...
Has clean outbuildings and toilet, 20: unclean, 0-10 20...
100
Church and Sunday School
Well ventilated, 20; badly, 0-10 20...
Heat evenly distributed, 20; unevenly, 0-10 20...
Cleaned regularly, 20; irregularly, 0-10 20...
Without carpets, 20 20...
Without plush seats, 20 20...
100
Streets
Sewerage underground, 20; surface, 0-10 20...
No pools neglected, 10 10...
No garbage piled up, 10 10...
Swept regularly, 20; irregularly, 0-10 20...
Sprinkled and flushed, 10 10...
Has baskets for refuse, 10 10...
All districts equally cleaned, 20; unequally, 0-10 20...
100

Until recently the most reliable test of health rights not enforced was the number of cases of preventable, communicable, contagious, infectious, transmissible diseases, such as smallpox, typhoid fever, yellow fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough. By noticing streets and houses where these diseases occurred, students learned a century ago that the darker and more congested the street the greater the prevalence of fevers and the greater the chance that one attacked would die. The well-to-do remove from their houses and their streets the dirt, the decomposed garbage, and stagnant pools from which fevers seem to spring. It was because fevers and congestion go together that laws were made to protect the well-to-do, the comfortable, and the clean against the slum. It is true to-day that if you study your city and stick a pin in the map, street for street, where infection is known to exist, you will find the number steadily increase as you go from uncongested to congested streets and houses, from districts of high rent to districts of low rent. Because it is easier to learn the number of persons who have measles and diphtheria and smallpox than it is to learn the incomes and living conditions prejudicial to health, and because our laws grant protection against communicable diseases to a child in whatever district he may be born, the record of cases of communicable diseases has heretofore been the best test of health rights unenforced. Even in country schools it would make a good lesson in hygiene and civics to have the children keep a record of absences on account of transmissible disease, and then follow up the record with a search for conditions that gave the disease a good chance.

But to wait for contagion before taking action has been found an expensive way of learning where health protection is needed. Even when infected persons and physicians are prompt in reporting the presence of disease it is often found that conditions that produced the disease have been overlooked and neglected.

For example, smallpox comes very rarely to our cities to-day. Wherever boards of health are not worried by "children's diseases," as is often the case, and wait for some more fearful disease such as smallpox, there you will find that garbage in the streets, accumulated filth, surface sewers, congested houses, badly ventilated, unsanitary school buildings and churches are furnishing a soil to breed an epidemic in a surprisingly short time. Where, on the other hand, boards of health regard every communicable disease as a menace to health rights, you will find that health officials take certain steps in a certain order to remove the soil in which preventable diseases grow. These steps, worked out by the sanitarians of Europe and America after a century of experiment, are seen to be very simple and are applicable by the average layman and average physician to the simplest village or rural community. How many of these steps are taken by your city? by your county? by your state?

1. Notification of danger when it is first recognized.

2. Registration at a central office of facts as to each dangerous thing or person.

3. Examination of the seat of danger to discover its extent, its cost, and new seats of danger created by it.

4. Isolation of the dangerous thing or person.

5. Constant attention to prevent extension to other persons or things.

6. Destruction or removal of disease germs or other causes of danger.