THE DISEASE AND THE REMEDY 449 



of millions of dollars in value. It is beginning to be understood that, 

 from the monetary standpoint alone, the value of a productive male 

 life to the state is even greater than its value to the family dependent 

 upon that life. The state makes a financial investment in every life, 

 and every day the amount of that investment is increased, and every 

 day the value of each human life should be greater than ever before. 

 In other words, it costs the state a number of hundred dollars (in 

 Massachusetts about $500), to educate alone, and rear to the normal 

 producing age each human life, and when a life is lost much more is 

 lost in addition to the sum invested and the compound interest thereon. 

 That life can never be replaced. Its power to produce is gone forever, 

 and no one can take its place. All others living and to be born have 

 their own work to do, must bear their proportional part of the state's 

 burden. 



The causes contributing to impair the quality or shorten the period 

 of productiveness in the individual may be classed as preventable and 

 unpreventable. Those included in the latter class are storms, floods 

 and other forces of nature, unforeseen accidents, the few unpreventable 

 diseases, and like fortuitous conditions. Among the preventable causes 

 of unproductiveness we find insanity, crime, preventable diseases (con- 

 tagious and otherwise), unsanitary factories and schools, bad sewerage, 

 poor water supply, and the like. 



The efficiency of a life becomes impaired and is a potential social 

 burden through disease. Disease is a deviation from the normal, and 

 is now understood to mean more than mere physical disability, for in- 

 dividual and national productiveness is found to be impaired through 

 the manifestation of disease in three forms : First, poor physical health, 

 largely the result of preventable diseases; second, poor mental health, 

 insanity for example, the cure for which lies in the direction of its 

 prevention; third, poor moral health, as illustrated in the various 

 forms of what is called crime, most of which can be prevented. 



We have seen that the causes contributing to a greater or less im- 

 pairment of individual usefulness are of fundamental importance, and 

 universal in their distribution, and any remedy which is to be success- 

 fully and economically applied must be likewise basic in character, 

 and of sufficient scope to meet the conditions present. 



It becomes incumbent upon us then to strive to raise the standard, 

 physical, mental and moral, of each voter, thus expediting the task of 

 showing him the importance of the relation between the activities of 

 the state and those of the individual. 



For generations we have waited, and are still asked to wait, for our 

 school children to develop and rise to carry these burdens; to improve 

 politics; to enact more righteous laws; to secure to the people a more 

 uniform and beneficent government ; and we forget the while that when 



VOL. LXVIII. — 29. 



