THE PREVENTION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE. 437 



does only harm, while a preventive method is 

 perfectly feasible and would not paralyze the 

 industry of the country. Control of cholera 

 by a milder system has proved to be the only 

 truly effective proceeding. 1 



The campaign against disease germs and 

 their diffusion is not without good prospects 

 of success. This campaign must be directed 

 also toward securing the prevention of disease, 

 since we are limited by social conditions in at- 

 tempting to apply the method, more correct 

 in principle, of the destruction of the predis- 

 position to disease. But the campaign against 

 germs can succeed without involving us in 

 any trenchant resistance to the modern social 

 order. It is the duty of really civilized states 

 to create conditions suitable to aid in this un- 

 dertaking. This duty consists in the reform 

 of the sanitary conditions upon the basis of the 

 theory and practice of public health. " It is," 

 says Sonderegger, " a momentous error to be- 

 lieve that any sanitary police system, no matter 

 how carefully conducted, can be of any use 

 where practices conducive to the public health 

 are neglected." 



1 A most disgraceful case of the application of extreme bacterio- 

 logical notions to the combating of disease may be found in the fact 

 that a few years ago even half-civilized and barely tolerated minia- 

 ture states of the east like Bulgaria had the effrontery, on the break- 

 ing out of cholera, to impose a scandalous blockade against the large 

 European states. 



