PUBLIC HEALTH WORK—JORDAN. 609 
manently crippling disorders. In other cases the application of simple 
corrective or palliative measures may greatly increase the industrial 
efficiency of the individual. If the defects are not remediable, 
their detection will at all events prevent the choice of unsuitable 
occupations, and will indicate desirable lines of education. 
In rural communities, undoubtedly one of the simplest, as well as 
most important, health protective measures is the adoption, under 
compulsion if need be, of a safeguarded and standardized form of 
barrel privy.!. A corollary hardly necessary to mention is the total 
abolition of the privy in all thickly settled towns. For lack of such 
regulations soil pollution occurs, the house fly finds an opportunity 
to transfer disease germs from excreta to food, and typhoid fever and 
hookworm disease become constant plagues over wide regions. 
In the campaign against tuberculosis it is perhaps too early to 
evaluate the numerous methods that have been proposed for lessening 
or eradicating this disease, but it is already evident that some are more 
directly repaying than others in proportion to the effort involved. © 
Among the methods for which public funds are legitimately available 
none is more promising than the provision of sanatoria for advanced 
cases of consumption. Newsholme and Koch have shown that the 
general diminution in the death rate from tuberculosis observed in 
most countries in recent years can be more reasonably attributed to 
the establishment of sanatoria than to any other factor, and that in 
' addition to its humanitarian advantages, the segregation and proper 
contro! of the advanced and dangerously infeétive cases is one of the 
most useful methods that can be employed by the community to 
protect itself against the spread of tuberculous infection. 
Another field in which practical workers are convinced that certain 
measures have direct efficacy in saving life is that of infant mortality. 
It has even been said that for the expenditure of a certain sum the 
saving of a life can be guaranteed. Certain it is that in few public 
health activities is the ratio between effort expended and results 
obtained so clearly seen. No one doubts to-day that prompt notifica- 
tion of births, education of the mother through any one of a number 
of agencies, and special provision for suitable feeding of infants 
during hot weather are factors that are bound to tell powerfully in the 
reduction of infant mortality. It may confidently be asserted that 
the degree of success achieved in this field will be limited only by the 
amount of endeavor the community is willing to put forth. 
It is impossible at present to apply direct tests of efficiency to some 
measures that undoubtedly promote health. The influence of 
playgrounds, public baths, regulation of the hours of labor in extra- 
articles by Stiles and Gardner, and Lumsden, Roberts. and Stiles. 
38734°—sm 1911,—39 
