INTRODUCTION 13 



was in full recognition of this that the framers of the ordinance of 

 1787 wrote into that immortal document: "Religion, morality and 

 knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of 

 mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encour- 

 aged." The territory of the Northwest, the government of which was 

 created in this ordinance, was at that time a vast waste of forest and 

 prairie, furnishing a scant and precarious subsistence for savage tribes 

 and attracting to its borders a few of the most hardy sons of civiliza- 

 tion. The knowledge, for whose growth and diffusion the wise provision 

 was made, has drained the malarial marshes, converted wild prairie 

 and tangled wood into fruitful orchards and fertile fields, dotted the 

 whole area with neat villages, reared great cities, linked all parts with 

 steam and electric roads, and provided comfortable homes and abundant 

 food for millions. The men who wrote the ordinance of 1787 left a 

 great inheritance which is temporarily in our possession. Let us write 

 into this great document: "Every ill which can be relieved shall be 

 removed, and every preventable disease shall be prevented." The 

 wisdom of our fathers has secured for us a greater measure of health 

 and a longer term of life; let us do as well for those who are to 

 possess this fair land in the next generation. Let us live not only 

 for ourselves and the present, but for the greater and more intelligent 

 life of the future. 



Not myself, but the truth that in life I have spoken, 

 Not myself, but the seed that in life I have sown 

 Shall pass into ages all about me forgotten 

 Save the truth I have spoken, the things I have done. 



All things are relative and health is no exception. With a greater 

 degree of health among all, religion will become more effective for 

 good, morality will have a deeper significance and a wider applica- 

 tion, and knowledge will multiply and distribute its blessings more 

 widely. 



After the last epidemic of the plague in London, in 1665, the death- 

 rate, so far as it can be ascertained, fell to between seventy and eighty 

 per 1,000. During the next century it fell as low as fifty, but fluctu- 

 ated greatly with recurring epidemics of typhus and smallpox. In the 

 nineteenth, it gradually and quite constantly decreased and is now 

 about fourteeen. In 1879-80, the first year in which the mortality 



