Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/326

322 against human enemies who will probably never come. Surely we can spare one half of this sum for foes who will surely and inevitably kill a million and a half of our people this very year, if we do not stop the slaughter.

Material equipment and the provision of a standing army of experts is, however, only a part of the necessary preparation for the war against disease. The reserves are always at the front in its battles, and the warfare is a guerilla warfare in which each one must do his part. Education is the key-note of the modern campaign for public health. Tuberculosis and infant mortality are preeminent among all the causes of preventable disease and death as the greatest scourges, from the abatement of which the largest results for humanity are to be attained. In each case the fight must be won, not merely by the construction of public works, but by the conduct of the individual life. The same thing is true with regard to the spread of the acute contagia, the burden of venereal disease, the obscure ill effects of defective eyes and ears and teeth, and a dozen other problems which in greater or less degree concern the public health. In every one of these cases the results we are striving for can only be reached by spreading a clear knowledge of the ways in which disease spreads, and the ways in which it is prevented, among the mothers who bring up babies and the men who pay rent in the tenement and work in the stores and factories.

As an illustration of what may be done along this line of public education I may cite the efforts being made by the New York State Department of Health to bring about a more effective contact between the expert who has the knowledge and the individual citizen who must make use of it.

The monthly bulletin of the department is our official organ of communication with the public, and this bulletin we have first of all attempted to popularize and to convert into an effective medium of education. We have changed its name to Health News. We have banished from its columns all long and technical discussions (which when necessary are issued as Special Bulletins to a selected mailing list). We have attempted to print in each number half a dozen brief articles on timely health topics by men of national reputation in their respective fields. We have paid special attention to real news items in regard to current sanitary problems and sanitary progress in the state. Each number is illustrated with cartoons, diagrams and photographs. The edition has been enlarged to over 30,000 copies, and it is mailed during the winter months to each of the 15,000 school principals in the state. We look forward in the future to a day when biology and public health shall occupy not a subordinate, but a central position in the school curriculum.

In order to come in touch with a wider public than we can hope to