THE PREVENTION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE. 421 



the national health, for physical well-being af- 

 fords the indispensable basis for all efforts of a 

 social and national kind. No civilized conti- 

 nental state yet possesses a central official board 

 of health, and we have not yet obtained very 

 much benefit from the advisory boards which do 

 more for the decoration and glorification of the 

 administration than in really safeguarding the 

 national health. When by the aid of hygiene 

 the efforts of physicians have reached their 

 culmination, and prevention of disease is rec- 

 ognized as better than cure, then in the spirit 

 of our modern striving after the social ideal we 

 must turn also to the urgent task of reforming 

 our Health Departments in accord with the 

 theory and practice of public hygiene. The 

 hygiene of the community afforded us our first 

 and most useful social institutions ; in this 

 field has been proved the possibility of accom- 

 plishing great social undertakings, and, in 

 contrast to the almost exclusively bureaucratic 

 treatment of social questions in parliament, 

 we have here made substantial gains. None 

 the less, hygiene has not yet obtained the 

 place belonging to it in sanitary administration. 

 The latter, instead of being always prepared to 

 act in the spirit of preventive hygiene, for the 

 most part plods on in the good old way with 

 " fresh emendations to the appendix of the 



