64 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



THE AVOIDABLE LOSS OF LIFE 

 J. Howard Beard, M. D., University of Illinois 



As a nation, we are moved to immediate action by the loss 

 of a few hundred lives in a spectacular way, but the deaths 

 of thousands of our fellow citizens from avoidable, but insid- 

 ious causes, do not interest us in proportion to the loss involved 

 or stimulate us to the necessary efforts of prevention. 



The burning of a theater with the loss of several hundred 

 lives is reported as a disaster and is followed by legislation 

 making public buildings safe, but whooping cough, which 

 destroys annually 10,000 persons and renders 190,000 ill, is 

 frequently not listed as a notifiable infectious disease. We 

 are horrified at the European conflict, but the combined loss 

 of all the navies engaged is less than the number slain each 

 year in this country by the typhoid bacillus. In a modern 

 battle 100,000 men may be killed and wounded, but the tubercle 

 bacillus slaughters 147,600 of our citizens yearly, and a mil- 

 lion and a half remain infected, the greater number of whom 

 will die of tuberculosis. 



communicable disease 



Over 500,000 people die of communicable disease each year 

 in the United States and over five millions are sick as a result 

 of infection. Had such a loss of life and health been local- 

 ized, a city the size of Cleveland would have been depopulated 

 and every individual in two cities the size of Chicago would 

 have been in need of medical attention. 



The immediate death rate and illness of infectious diseases 

 are scarcely more important than those of their complications 

 and sequelae. Measles and whooping cough prepare the soil 

 for tuberculosis; scarlet fever for renal diseases; rheumatic 

 fever, tonsillitis, pneumonia and syphilis for cardiac failure; 

 and, infectious disease, in general, and syphilis in particular, 

 for vascular degeneration. The effect of sequelae are well il- 

 lustrated in the recent studies of Dublin in connection with 

 typhoid fever. He noted that the death rate among typhoid 

 survivors for the three years following the attack was twice 

 the expected mortality for an equal number of individuals of 

 the same age, sex and color. Oi those dying within threr 



