BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



products has now been established for many years, and it 

 extends throughout almost innumerable ramifications. 



Public health work is still in process of discovering its 

 material. It is not so many years since it perceived that 

 children were an important part of the public. Before that 

 they seem to have been neither seen nor heard. Nowadays 

 they loom large in the vision and the activities of the 

 average health office. Then someone discovered the mothers 

 of the children, and presently the industrial worker was 

 unearthed and shown to be worthy of consideration from a 

 health standpoint. And so, as regards the conception of 

 what constitutes the public, a continual broadening and 

 shifting of viewpoint has been necessary. Perhaps the most 

 recent class to be recognized as presenting special health 

 problems which will have to be dealt with is the touring 

 public, that very considerable portion of the population 

 which is here to-day and several hundred miles away 

 to-morrow, exposed, on the way, to a variety of give-and- 

 take episodes with roadside brooks, refreshment stands, 

 and other hazards. 



It has been pointed out also how the primary interest 

 was fortunately with the infectious diseases — those which 

 are due to parasitism with microorganisms — but that 

 diseases due to improper diet, to poisonous influences in 

 the environment, to the rush of modern life, to psychic 

 disturbances, to social maladjustments, and to heredity, 

 have forced themselves upon the attention of health 

 officials and students, and have demanded action for their 

 relief. 



To meet all of these varied demands calls for a great 

 number of separate but coordinated activities, and it may 

 be profitable to attempt a brief review and classification of 

 them. Roughly, then, the activities of public health work 

 may be divided into (1) research, (2) control, (3) education, 

 (4) legislation. 



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