42 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



permitted to make their way througli life as the victims of 

 physical defects, the Federal Goverument, as far as pos- 

 sible, is retaining the sick and wounded and disabled in 

 service, assigning them to special hopsitals where they 

 not only receive medical care of the highest type, but where 

 they are being re-educated to a condition of self-sustaining 

 efficiency. 



At the present time, if the sick or wounded soldier will 

 avail himself of what the government urges him to accept, 

 he will be returned to civil life physically rehabilitated 

 and ready to resume his former occupation, or he will be 

 specially trained in a new means of livelihood adapted to 

 his physical condition. Merely as a minor part of this 

 great program of reconstruction the Federal Congress has 

 recently appropriated the sum of seven million and fifty 

 thousand dollars for the erection and maintenance of 

 tuberculosis sanatoria to be operated under the direction 

 of the United States Public Health Service. 



As important as the steps of this reconstruction policy 

 may be, and as great as the public investment in health, I 

 still feel that the secondary or remote result of this great 

 program will be more important to the nation, as a whole, 

 than the direct or immediate result. That is, I feel that the 

 realization of the value of individual and community 

 health, brought about by the war, will not be forgotten, 

 and I am convinced that the policy of generous appropria- 

 tions and generous expenditures for health purposes will 

 be continued not only by the federal government, but by the 

 states by local communities. The influence of the liberal 

 policies of the government in attacking health problems 

 during the war bore fruit in Illinois when at the autumn 

 election of 1918, the people of thirty-three counties voted 

 b}^ overwhelming majorities to establish county tubercu- 

 losis sanatoria, free tuberculosis dispensaries and visiting 

 nurse service. While Illinois has sorely needed these insti- 

 tutions and has apparently been very reluctant in the past 

 to adequately meet that need, I am satisfied that such a 

 result could not have been attained at this time except 

 through the awakening influence of the war. 



In times past, child welfare work, — the effort for the 

 conservation of child life and the protection of child health 

 — has been regarded by the average citizen as a phase of 

 public health activity of only moderate importance. The 



