Six needed more nourishing food.
This meant that more than 52,000 of the number needed some medical care that they would not have received at home because their parents had never noticed the need of it. Every one of them could by prompt attention, a small dentist"s bill, a slight operation of the throat or nose, or the use of gla.s.ses, (almost 25,000 needed gla.s.ses) be saved great suffering or inability to work in later life.
As we learn more of disease, and especially of germ diseases, we are oppressed by the feeling that we are in constant danger, but we must bear in mind that it is the weak and unfit that are attacked, and that fitness, while partly inherited, is almost altogether a matter of proper hygiene. Keeping our bodily defenses in good condition against disease is as much a matter of necessity and good policy as keeping the defenses of a city in fighting condition in time of war.
That life may be prolonged and so strengthened that the average height, weight, and endurance will be increased, admits of no doubt. The same rule of cultivation runs through all nature. The original or natural apple was a small, sour, bitter crab. The difference between that and the finest products of western orchards, is altogether a matter of cultivation, selection, and proper treatment. In 1710 the average weight of dressed cattle did not exceed three hundred and seventy pounds. Now it is not far from one thousand pounds. An equal change could be made in the human race, but because we believe so fully in personal liberty to live our lives as we choose, little has actually been done to raise the human standard.
The care and hygiene of children is receiving universal attention, with the result of a wonderful reduction in the sickness and death of children, but as yet comparatively few grown persons apply these lessons to their own lives, and the rates for older persons remain almost unchanged.
When individuals have done all that they can, there still remains much that must be done by the city, the state, and the nation. Boards of health can do much toward controlling epidemics by placing infected households under quarantine, by compelling householders who are ignorant or careless to clean their premises and to take other precautions for the public health.
Hospitals, both public and private, have done excellent work, not only in curing disease but in gaining more definite knowledge of the nature of diseases through the study of large numbers of cases.
The cleaning of streets and the removal of garbage regularly are among the great factors in keeping a city in a sanitary condition. New Orleans and some of the cities of Cuba and Porto Rico show strikingly what may be done in that direction.
Medical inspection of schools is a new and valuable aid to health.
Epidemics of childish diseases which sweep through the schools with a fearful record of illness and a lesser one of death, may often be checked entirely by the close watch of the medical inspector, who removes the first patients from the schools when the disease is in its beginning.
Public playgrounds for children in cities have an influence that it is as good for health as it is for morals, providing, as it does, fresh air and active exercise for children. Open air schools for tubercular children are being operated in several cities with excellent results in health and school work.
Many states are making an organized effort to fight tuberculosis by establishing fresh-air colonies where, with pure air, rest and plenty of the most nourishing food, patients are restored to health.
Care of epileptics and the insane by the state, with proper hygiene and treatment, accomplishes many cures.
The nation is doing excellent work in a few lines, notably the Pure Food Bureau and the Marine Hospital Corps, but perfected organization of all the forces is lacking. The Department of Agriculture has done a wonderful work in investigating and curbing insect pests that injure farm crops and trees, and in stamping out disease among live stock.
Forty-six million dollars have been spent and well spent in the work in the last few years, but it is a matter of reproach that more pains are taken to save the lives of cattle and farm crops than human lives.
There should be a strong central Bureau of Health with power and money scientifically to investigate disease, to distribute information as the Department of Agriculture does to farmers, and to carry out their ideas, as do state and city boards of health.
We have dealt with only one side of the question--the suffering and sorrow; but in a work on conservation, we must consider also the money question, the loss to the nation in time and money of these great wastes of health and life.
There are no trustworthy statistics as to wages. The average yearly earnings of all persons, from day laborers to presidents, is estimated at seven hundred dollars; but as not more than three-fourths of the people are actual workers, three-fourths of this amount, or five hundred and twenty-five dollars is taken as the average wage.
From these figures the money value of a person under five years is given at ninety-five dollars; from five to ten years, at nine hundred and fifty dollars; from ten to twenty years at $2,000; from twenty to thirty at $4,000; thirty to fifty years at $4,000; fifty to eighty at $2,900 and over eighty at $700 or less. The average value of life at all ages is $2,900 and the 93,000,000 persons living in this country would be worth in earning power the vast sum of $270,000,000,000. This is probably a low estimate but is more than double all our other wealth combined.
Now let us see how much of this vital wealth is wasted. As the average death rate is at least eighteen out of each thousand, we have 1,500,000 as the number of deaths in the United States each year. Of these, forty-two per cent., or 630,000 are cla.s.sed as preventable--so that a number equal to the entire population of the city of Boston die each year whose deaths are as unnecessary as is the waste of our forests by fire.
If some great plague should carry off all the people of Boston, not the people of the United States only, but of the whole world would be roused by the appalling calamity and every possible means would be employed to prevent other cities from sharing such a fate; but because these preventable deaths are not in one city, but are widely scattered, we have long remained indifferent to this terrible and needless waste.
Then there are always 3,000,000 persons ill, 1,000,000 of whom are of working age. If, as before, we count only three-fourths of them as actual workers, we find a yearly direct loss from sickness of $500,000,000 in wages. The daily cost of nursing, doctor bills, and medicine is counted at one dollar and fifty cents, which makes for the 3,000,000 sick, a yearly cost for these items of more than $1,500,000,000. What should we think if nearly all of the people of the city of New York were constantly sick, and were spending for doctors, nurses, and medicine as much money as Congress appropriates to run every department of the government!
It is estimated that sickness and death cost the United States $3,000,000,000 annually, of which at least a third, probably one-half, is preventable. Is it not well worth while, then, from a money standpoint alone, to use every effort to conserve our national health?
Conservation of health and life, going hand in hand with conservation of national resources, will give us not only a better America, but better, stronger, happier, more enlightened Americans. What a new world would be opened to us if we could have a nation with no sickness or suffering!
That is the ideal, and everything that we can do toward realizing that ideal is a great step in human progress.
REFERENCES
Report on National Vitality. Committee of One Hundred. (Fisher.)
The Nature of Man. Metchnikoff.
The Prolongation of Life. Metchnikoff.
The New Hygiene. Metchnikoff.
Vital Statistics. Farr.
The Kingdom of Man. Lankester.
Cost of Tuberculosis. Fisher.
School Hygiene. Keating.
Economic Loss Through Insects That Carry Disease. Howard.
Report of a.s.sociated Fraternities on Infectious, Contagious, and Hereditary Diseases.
Conservation of Life and Health by Improved Water Supply. Kober.
Backward Children in the Public Schools. Davis.
Dangers to Mine Workers. (Mitch.e.l.l.) Report Governor"s Conference.
Tuberculosis in the U. S. Census Report 1908.
Industrial Accidents. Bureau of Labor Pamphlet, 1906.
Factory Sanitation and Labor Protection. Dept. of Labor, No. 44.
How Insects Affect Health in Rural Districts. Dept. of Agriculture.
Bulletin 155.
Public Health and Water Pollution. Bulletin 93.
CHAPTER XIII
BEAUTY
America has another resource that differs from all the others, and yet is no less valuable to us as a nation, for it is upon natural beauty that we must depend to attract visitors and settlers from other countries, and also to develop love of country in our own people, and to arouse in them all the higher sentiments and ideals.
The love of romance and poetry is awakened only by the sight of beautiful objects, and that nation will produce the highest cla.s.s of citizens which has most within it to kindle these lofty ideas. The savage cares only for the comfort of his body, but as civilization advances, man devotes more and more thought to those pleasures that come only through his mind and the cultivation of his tastes.
The United States is particularly fortunate in this respect, for here is everything to inspire a love of beauty. There is the beauty of changing seasons, of our wonderful autumn forest coloring, of rivers, mountains, lakes, sea, and sh.o.r.e.