COMMUNITY DEFENSE OF NATIONAL VITALITY 323 



reach with our own publications, we have asked the newspapers of the 

 state to cooperate with us, and have met with generous response. We 

 send out each week a 500-word health hint on such topics as Infant 

 Feedmg, Hot Weather Hygiene, Health on the Farm, County Hospi- 

 tals and Taxes, Cancer a Preventable Disease, and the like. The 

 " Hints " are mailed in proof or in electrotype, as desired, and over 400 

 daily and weekly papers are using them each week throughout the state. 

 We estimate that by this means we are reaching a million and a half 

 of readers. 



The printed page must be supplemented by a more striking and 

 vivid appeal to the eye, and the popular exhibit should form a part of 

 any well-organised public health campaign. The work of the New 

 York State Department during the summer was centered particularly 

 upon the prevention of infant mortality, and to aid in this campaign we 

 prepared three child-welfare exhibits, which between April and July 

 were shown in twenty-five counties of the state. These exhibits led in 

 many cases to the establislmaent of infant welfare stations and in every 

 community through which the exhibits passed there has been left a trail 

 of enthusiastic and constructive infant-welfare work. During the fall, 

 these infant-welfare exhibits and others dealing with rural hygiene 

 have been shown at forty county fairs throughout the state. The De- 

 partment arranges for lectures upon health topics whenever requested, 

 and the members of the staff as well as the sanitary supervisors are 

 kept busy filling engagements of this kind. Three special lecturers on 

 diseases of the eye and ear, on mouth hygiene and the care of the teeth, 

 and on social hygiene are attached to the department and we plan dur- 

 ing the coming winter to prepare and print a series of syllabi of lectures 

 on all the more important public health topics, with a set of lantern 

 slides corresponding to each lecture which may be sent out on request 

 for the use of health officers and other local lectures. Original moving- 

 picture films dealing with infant-welfare work and rural hj'giene are 

 now being prepared for use. 



I have dwelt somewhat in detail upon the public education work of 

 the New York State Department of Health merely as a type of what 

 many progressive state departments, like Virginia and North Carolina, 

 and city departments, like Chicago, are carrying forward. The work 

 of the Life Extension Institute is full of promise of a more direct and 

 personal type of education under private auspices, and the Metropolitan 

 Life Insurance Company is doing a splendid work in diffusing the prin- 

 ciples of public health, not only among its own policyholders, but in the 

 community at large. 



One of the next tasks of the future, as it seems to me, is to add to 

 the training of the public in the elements of hygiene and sanitation 

 some plan of organization which shall make our health militia effective 



