64 PUBLIC HEALTH 



medical men these have seldom been busy practitioners. Sir George 

 Baker and Jenner were, it is true, of this class, but not Petten- 

 kofer, or Koch, or Ross, or Billings, or Reed. 1 



Reflections of this sort naturally lead to a consideration of the 

 reciprocal relations of public health science and the science of edu- 

 cation. I do not need to dwell upon the beneficial effects of public 

 health science upon the hygiene and sanitation of school-children 

 or school-houses. These benefits have long been emphasized by 

 sanitarians and sanitary reformers and are sufficiently obvious. 

 The reverse of the picture, however, is by no means so well under- 

 stood. Unless one is familiar with the facts, it is difficult to conceive 

 how little impression the splendid progress which the last fifty years 

 have witnessed in public health science has as yet made upon the 

 curriculum of education. From top to bottom and from bottom to 

 top the schools, whether primary, grammar, high, normal, technical, 

 medical, or any other class, are recreant, inasmuch as they neglect 

 almost wholly any adequate training of their pupils in the principles 

 of public health science which are confessedly of such profound 

 importance to mankind. There is, to be sure, just now a popular 

 wave of enthusiasm touching the extermination of tuberculosis, 

 but in the United States, at any rate, both schools and universities 

 are singularly negligent of their most elementary duties in this 

 direction. Yet if what I have said before is true, if the laity are to 

 participate from this time forward with medical men in sanitary 

 and hygienic legislation and administration, if engineers and medical 

 men in particular are to serve upon boards of health or in other 

 executive positions connected with public works, then, surely, it is 

 the duty of the science of education to lend its powerful aid and 

 not to fail to save the lives and health of the people as these can be 

 saved to-day, but always to promote that public health and that 

 large measure of consequent happiness which can probably be more 

 easily and quickly accomplished in this way than in any other. 



As to the function of medical education and engineering educa- 

 tion in respect to the dissemination of public health science, I shall 

 say only a word. In spite of the reiteration by medical men of their 

 belief in the importance of hygiene and preventive medicine as a 

 part of the equipment of the medical profession, it is a significant 

 fact that in America even the best medical schools devote very little 

 time to any adequate instruction in these subjects. It may be that 

 this is wise and that the pressing necessities of practical medicine 

 forbid any extended instruction in public health science. I am 

 willing to believe, if I must, that this may be the case; but if it is, 



1 " During the course of an epidemic, physicians are too busy to make obser- 

 vations which require much time or care, or to make more than brief notes." 

 J. S. Billings. 



