Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/379

Rh the past generation towards applying the laws of hygiene, as is shown in the sanitation of our great cities, and especially in regard to the question of water-supply. It is good, for example, that Glasgow goes to Loch Katrine for her water-supply, Manchester to the English lakes, and Liverpool to the Welsh hills. Each of these great cities carries for many miles the pure distillate of the hills to its million of inhabitants. It has cost much in pounds sterling, though not more than if each family had a pump in its backyard. On the other hand, think of the disease and suffering and death prevented, enteric fever almost gone where thousands would have died of it, and tens of thousands been debilitated, and these of the best of the citizens, for disease is no eliminator of the unfit. Think of all this, and then say, Did it not pay these great cities to bring the pure water from the lakes in the hills?

But why do these good cities content themselves to allow their little children at a most susceptible age to be supplied still with milk which contains the bacillus of tuberculosis in so large a percentage as five to ten per cent.? And why does the law of the land prevent these corporations from searching out tubercular cows in all the areas supplying them with milk? If it is part of the business of a municipality to see that its citizens have a pure water-supply, why should it not also be allowed to see that they have a clean milk supply?

Long ago the power to make the lame to walk was regarded as a divine gift. When is mankind going to awake to the fact that science has placed this gift in its hands? Much more than half of the lame and spinally-deformed children in our midst are in that condition because of infection of joints or spine with the bacillus of tuberculosis. By open-air hospitals and open-air schools we seek and succeed in curing a percentage of them, but how much better it would be if we took the fundamental problem of tubercular infection in hand and prevented them from becoming lame and deformed?

There is at present on foot in England a great scheme to enable the blind to read, and it deserves our support because it is our fault that these people are blind. The sad fate of the man born blind appeals to all kind hearts; but men are not born blind, they become blind within a week or two of birth because of an infectious disease contracted from the mother at birth. Science knows and has taught the world how this blindness can be quite prevented, and it is because of our faulty organization for attending to maternities amongst the poor that these people are blind. By proper organization practically all blindness arising at the time of birth can be prevented. Why is it not done? Thus our modern science can make the blind to see and the lame to walk, but it is so manacled by ancient ways and customs that it is left powerless, and so there are these maimed and darkened lives of innocent people, and they are left partially burdening the community which has only its own folly to blame for the whole stupid position.