CHAPTER VIII 



RURAL HEALTH PHYSICAL AND MENTAL 

 A. RURAL HEALTH PHYSICAL 



A SOCIOLOGIST'S HEALTH PROGRAM FOR THE 

 RURAL COMMUNITY 1 



L. L. BERNARD 



NOT the only dangers to human beings come from physical 

 violence, although in these times of war and international unrest 

 we are too prone to forget or neglect the subtler evils. The 

 menaces to morals and to health have much more disastrous 

 effects, not alone because they claim more victims by actual 

 count, even in war time, than does physical violence, but -also 

 because they are so much more secretive in their methods, and 

 of all enemies their approach is the most unseen. As Professor 

 Carver says, "When people realize clearly that babies can be 

 killed with fly-infected food as well as with an ax, they ought 

 to be as willing to work as hard to exterminate the fly as they 

 would to exterminate a gang of murderers who went about killing 

 babies with axes." But the problem of getting people to realize 

 the dangers of germ diseases and moral pitfalls is a very difficult 

 one. Merely the relatively uneducated eye can perceive the 

 dangers of physical violence, but it requires a mind educated in 

 at least the rudiments of the theory of germ diseases and sanita- 

 tion to apprehend the dangers to both young and old from flies, 

 mosquitoes, tubercle, and intestinal bacilli. The one is capable 

 of dramatic presentation, while the other is for most people in- 

 formation of a highly prosaic character. 



Likewise, warfare against the one appeals readily and vividly 

 to the imagination and can be waged more or less directly, while 



i Adapted from "The N-\v Chivalry Health." i>|>. :54!)-358. (Southern 

 Sociological Congress, May, 1915.) 



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