124 MAN, THE ANIMAL 



mic activity but also he believes that his efforts 

 have met with a large measure of success. For in 

 19 1 7 (the most recent year for which figures are 

 available) he agreed to use $120,000,000 for the 

 general purpose of safeguarding and promoting 

 public health in the United States alone in cities 

 having 30,000 or more inhabitants. 



This is a vast sum of money to be appropriated 

 from the taxes and one needs to be warned that 

 all of these preventive measures do not necessarily 

 insure protection. We lull ourselves into a false 

 sense of security when we accept such measures 

 as wholly adequate. In the last analysis disease 

 and death are both largely dependent on the in- 

 herited constitution of the body and the state of 

 health at the time that it is exposed to disease- 

 causing germs. Public health measures will 

 never supplant these fundamental principles and 

 the American people are in danger of being edu- 

 cated away from the significance of the elementary 

 laws of living protoplasm and the limits under 

 which they can be modified. 



That we are still far from understanding the 

 causes of death, a study of the epidemic of in- 

 fluenza in 19 1 8-19 reveals. The term pandemic 

 better describes its extensiveness, for it was world- 

 wide and of greater severity than any previous 

 outbreaks. This means that nearly the entire 



