12 INTRODUCTION 



In so great a work as the eradication of preventable disease, all 

 intelligent people must cooperate. The law must support by proper 

 enactments, and these must be enforced with justice and intelligence; 

 it must recognize that the right to enjoy health is quite as sacred as 

 that to possess property; that to poison men in factories and mines, 

 to pollute drinking-water supplies, to adulterate foods, and to drug 

 with nostrums, is manslaughter. Religion must teach the sanctity of 

 the body as well as that of the soul, that ignorance is sin and knowledge 

 virtue, that parenthood is the holiest function performed by man, and 

 that to transmit disease is an unpardonable sin. The teacher must 

 know hygiene as well as mathematics. The capitalist must recognize 

 that improvement in health and growth in intelligence increase the 

 efficiency of labor. There never has been a time when scientific medi- 

 cine has had so many and such efficient and appreciative helpers as 

 it has to-day. Our sanitary laws are for the most part good, but 

 their administration is weak, on account of ignorance. The pulpits 

 of the land are open, for the most part, to the sanitarian. The 

 respectable newspapers are most effective in the crusade against 

 quackery and disease. The philanthropist has learned that the advance- 

 ment of science confers the greatest and most lasting benefits on man. 



There is a moral obligation to be intelligent. Ignorance is a vice 

 and when it results in injury to anyone, it becomes a crime, a moral, 

 if not a statutory one. To infect another with disease, either directly 

 or indirectly, as a result of ignorance, is an immoral act. The purpose 

 of government is to protect its citizens, and a government which fails 

 to shelter its citizens against infection is neither intelligent nor moral. 

 To transmit disease of body or mind to offspring is an unpardonable 

 sin. In a reasonable sense it is worse than murder, because it projects 

 suffering into the future indefinitely. 



That medicine has become a fundamental social service must be 

 evident. To return one incapacitated by illness or injury to the con- 

 dition of self-support, benefits not only the individual, but the com- 

 munity, inasmuch as it increases its productive capacity. Infirmity is 

 a direct burden on the individual and scarcely less direct on the com- 

 munity. Weakness in any part diminishes the strength of the whole. 

 It is a fully established principle in social economy that widespread 

 intelligence and growth in knowledge are beneficial to the' state. It 



