SYMPOSIUM ON PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEMS 76 
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THE ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF PREVENTABLE DISEASE 
The economic cost of preventable disease is appalling. All 
children dying before the tenth year represent a total loss, 
Values have been created and destroyed without giving return. 
Society is demanding each year greater skill and increased 
efficiency. The larger investment in the training of the indi- 
vidual makes the loss most extensive. Nearly one-third of the 
deaths due to typhoid fever and one-fifth of those caused by 
tuberculosis occur in the high-school-university period of life. 
The time of the greatest expenditure in the preparation of the 
individual to enter service. 
The toll of syphilis, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis is heay- 
iest during the period of greatest usefulness. Syphilis shortens 
the expectancy of life 5.5 years. It may fasten itself upon the 
posterity of the individual, increasing degeneracy, encouraging 
poverty, and promoting public charges. It erects about 15-20 
per cent of our asylums for the insane and taxes the nation 
for their maintenance. Tuberculosis and typhoid cause 90 
per cent of their deaths before sixty; make tens of thousands 
seek public charity or spend large sums to care for themselves 
when they should be producing. 
Industrial accidents and illness among workers are annually 
responsible for the loss of a billion dollars in wages and ex- 
penses for medical care. 
The great economic loss due to the death of individuals be- 
fore they have become an earning power, and of those dying 
during the productive period of life, is small, compared to the 
stupendous loss caused by invalidity, unemployment, decreased 
efficiency, and the cost for the care of the sick and defective. 
PREVENTION 
Whether we consider personal hygiene; the rural portions 
of the country with its problems of home and school sanita- 
tion, or, our cities with their social and engineering difficulties 
in the control of disease; prevention is a question of money, 
education, and the use of available scientific knowledge. 
Within natural limits community health should be in direct 
proportion to the economic status of the individual and to 
the financial support received by constituted health agencies. 
