GENERAL PAPERS 73 
life 5.5 years; it renders the individual inefficient during the 
most productive period of life; it fastens itself upon the pos- 
terity of its victim; increasing degeneracy, encouraging poverty 
and promoting public charges; it erects about 20 per cent of 
our insane asylums and taxes the nation for their maintenance. 
Typhoid fever causes 94 per cent of its mortality before the 
sixtieth year, over 48 per cent before the twenty-fifth year, 
and 29 per cent between the fifteenth and twenty-fifth year. 
Tuberculosis destroys 90 per cent of its victims before sixty; 
30 per cent before twenty-five, and 19 per cent between the 
fifteenth and twenty-fifth year. Tuberculosis and typhoid fever 
not only cause over 90 per cent of their mortality before sixty, 
but they cause tens of thousands to seek public charity or to 
spend large sums to recover their health, when they should 
be producing. Nearly one-third of the deaths due to typhoid 
and one fifth of those caused by tuberculosis occur in the high- 
school-university period of life, the time representing the 
maximum investment of society in the preparing of the in- 
dividual for usefulness. 
Diseases of the heart, kidney and blood vessels are becoming 
more frequent, thus individuals are prematurely lost to society 
who by training and experience should be of the greatest value. 
The great economic loss due to the deaths of individuals 
before they have become an earning power and of persons 
dying during the most productive period of life is relatively 
small as compared with the enormous loss caused by illness 
with its consequent loss of time of the wage earner, the ineffi- 
ciency of the worker, the expenditures for medicine and atten- 
tion and the absence or decrease of productiveness on the part 
of other individuals who must spend a part of their entire time 
in caring for the sick. 
It is obvious that this large loss of life and health constitutes 
a serious curtailment of the productive efficiency of the nation 
and that a heavy economic burden results from the support of 
invalids, defectives and those deprived of their bread winners. 
As long as preventable diseases are present we are paying large 
premiums to keep them, for it would be much cheaper to pre- 
vent than to have them. 
