348 INFECTIONS OF THE DIGESTIVE TRACT 



rents. Equally preventable are the majority of cases 

 of typhoid fever. It is not because of any lack of 

 hygienic knowledge that typhoid fever yearly claims 

 its hundreds of victims in the United States. It is 

 because of the semi-criminal indifference of the un- 

 educated politicians who rule many of our great cities. 

 Eradicate the sources of typhoid contamination of the 

 water supplies of cities, and the deaths from typhoid 

 fever will dwindle to insignificant numbers. One highly 

 competent and determined publicist who, backed by pub- 

 lic opinion, should force the rulers of our cities to give 

 the people uncontaminated water, would do more for his 

 country than the hundreds of physicians who are con- 

 stantly engaged in the treatment of typhoid fever. 



But the problem of prevention will have been only 

 partially solved when the infections of cholera infantum, 

 dysentery, and typhoid fever are broadly checked by 

 measures based upon what modern medicine has taught 

 us about the causes of these diseases. There will re- 

 main the more elusive task of preventing the occurrence 

 of the severe chronic infections of the digestive tract. 

 The acute infections like dysentery and typhoid are so 

 numerous and obtrusive in their manifestations that it 

 is impossible to overlook them; the chronic infections 

 are insidious in their onset, obscure in their manifesta- 

 tions, and seldom involve groups of individuals ; hence 

 they pass relatively unnoticed. The injurious effects 

 of the chronic infections are none the less real. They 

 restrict the fullest development of a nation by shortening 

 the lives of many useful individuals and by rendering 



