66 PUBLIC HEALTH 



telescope, and public health science, as we have shown above, had 

 its beginnings nearly a century before any considerable progress 

 had been made in micro-biology. But it is not too much to say that 

 the developments in micro-biology since Pasteur began his work have 

 not only revolutionized our ideas of the nature of the infectious 

 diseases, but have also placed in our hands the key of their complete 

 control. 



Concerning the relations of physiology to public health science, 

 I must not fail to speak. Here is a field absolutely ripe for the harvest, 

 but one in which the harvesters are as yet very few. I have lately 

 had occasion to examine somewhat carefully the present condition 

 of our knowledge of personal hygiene which is nothing more (and 

 should be nothing less) than the applications of physiological science 

 to the conduct of human life with the result that I have been 

 greatly impressed with its vast possibilities and promise. Man is 

 a gregarious animal, and mankind is to-day crowding into cities as 

 perhaps never before. Moreover, the industrial and commercial age 

 in which we live is characterized to an extraordinary degree by the 

 sedentary life. Yet the sedentary life is almost unavoidably an 

 abnormal life, or at least it is a life very different from that lived by 

 most of our ancestors. In the sedentary life the maintenance of a 

 high degree of physiological resistance apparently becomes difficult, 

 and if the vital resistance of the community in general is lowered, 

 then the public health is directly and unfavorably affected, so that 

 considerations of personal hygiene have a direct bearing upon the 

 science of public health. 



There are, to be sure, interesting and suggestive symptoms of a 

 wholesome reaction, in America at any rate, against the evils of the 

 sedentary life. Parks and open spaces are being liberally provided; 

 public and private gymnasiums are rapidly coming into being; 

 public playgrounds are thrown open in many of our cities, free of 

 expense to the laboring, but, nevertheless, often sedentary, popula- 

 tion; vacations are more than ever the fashion; sports and games 

 are everywhere receiving increasing attention; while public baths 

 and other devices for the promotion of personal hygiene are more 

 and more coming into being. All this is as it should be, but all is as 

 yet only a beginning. Here, again, the science of education is sadly 

 at fault and in the direction of educational reform as regards per- 

 sonal hygiene lies immense opportunity for a contribution to public 

 health science. 



The science of statistics, which has done great service in public 

 health science in the past, is likely to do much more in the future. 

 Without accurate statistics of population, mortality, and the causes 

 of sickness and death, the science of epidemiology is impotent, and 

 the efficiency or inefficiency of public health measures cannot be 



