320 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



what the suffering of a little baby's death means, and realize that the 

 tragedy has come to more than one in ten of all the households glad- 

 dened by birth during the year. Yet nothing is more certain than that 

 nearly half of these infant deaths are preventable, and by simple and 

 definite procedures. The establishment of infant welfare stations for 

 the instruction of mothers in breast feeding and the other essentials 

 of maternal care is a measure that never fails to bring results. In New 

 York City the infant death rate has been reduced one third by this 

 means in a period of seven years, and a state-wide campaign along 

 similar lines inaugurated last summer by the New York State Depart- 

 ment of Health resulted during the first four months in a saving of 

 700 infant lives. 



Many of us, I suppose, have felt that there must have been a strange 

 lack, either of responsibility or of humanity, or of imagination, in the 

 chancelleries of Europe when the bronze doors of Janus were unlocked. 

 Is there not the same lack nearer home while this slaughter of the inno- 

 cents goes on unchecked? 



The children who escape the perils of infancy are next exposed to 

 the attack of such communicable diseases as diphtheria, scarlet fever, 

 measles and whooping cough. These enemies are less easy to control, 

 but they may be held in check by measures for prompt diagnosis and 

 intelligent isolation, and by the cultivation of habits of personal clean- 

 liness. Against diphtheria, in particular, we have a practically certain 

 defense in antitoxin, yet we lose 20,000 children every year from this 

 disease because some of our trusted guardians, the physicians, neglect 

 or postpone the use of this simple and specific weapon. 



When the army of civil life is actually mustered in for active service, 

 the enemies, typhoid fever and tuberculosis, make their great frontal 

 attacks. Typhoid fever has been reduced to an almost negligible quan- 

 tity in many communities, and those which lag behind pay their own 

 penalty for special and conspicuous neglect. Against tuberculosis, on 

 the other hand, we are all over the country doing little more than fight 

 a drawn battle. The great wave of enthusiasm which swept over the 

 United States ten years ago has not yet achieved all the results antici- 

 pated. There are still 150,000 deaths a year from this disease, of which 

 three fourths should be prevented. The theory of the anti-tuberculosis 

 campaign has been well thought out, but in few places has the 

 practical machinery for carrying it out been adequately supplied in the 

 shape of hospitals for the isolation of advanced, and the cure of early 

 cases, and of visiting nurses to secure the proper care of patients in the 

 home. Yet it is of little value to preach hygienic living without pro- 

 viding the means for practicing what we teach. Nowhere has the 

 enemy been vigorously pursued into the insanitary tenements, and the 

 dusty, unventilated factories where he gains his first foothold. The 

 work of our tenement departments and state labor bureau is only a 



