610 
regard to those aspects which are of im- 
portance to the community. In this re- 
spect, therefore, he is altogether unquali- 
fied for good citizenship. 
It is true that the larger cities have, in 
general, progressive health departments. 
The chief difficulty which these depart- 
ments have to contend with in their efforts 
at reform is the ignorance of the public. 
Their. battle is the old battle against ig- 
norance. If only the people had a clear 
knowledge of the facts, they would them- 
selves clamor for the very reforms that the 
health departments can not yet introduce 
simply because public opinion is not yet 
sufficiently educated. In the smaller cities 
and towns, many municipal conditions are 
excellent because their utility is obvious 
and because, being of a purely economic 
character, they are understood by business 
men. This is not at all the case with the 
hygiene of such towns, for the good reason 
that people and civie authorities alike do 
not, for want of the appropriate education, 
realize what conditions are desirable for 
the public health. Milk inspection and 
food inspection are not rated at their true 
value for want of the necessary mental 
perspective. The town sells water whose 
purity is not controlled. Appropriations 
made for the health department are en- 
tirely inadequate and the health officer, 
therefore, lacks the sinews of war against 
disease. This state of matters is typical of 
the smaller cities and towns of this coun- 
try. The remedy lies in an educated 
public opinion; and who, in such a com- 
munity, should be the leaders and educa- 
tors of public opinion rather than the col- 
lege graduates? 
It is not at all necessary, in the mean- 
time, to make any rigid decision what 
should constitute the essentials of a course 
of general hygiene, nor to determine how 
the emphasis shall be distributed between 
(SCIENCE 
[N.S. Von. XXXV. No. 903 
personal hygiene and public hygiene. The 
precise content of the course can be out- 
lined after it is decided that something of 
the kind must be taught. Now, if there is 
any reason for teaching civics in college, 
there is at once a still better reason for 
teaching public hygiene. Again, if you 
make ‘‘physical culture’’ a required course 
and compel each undergraduate to take 
exercise, are you not in a position to join 
to this an exhortation that he shall sterilize 
his toothbrush? It is absurd that any 
post-Levitican scheme of physical educa- 
tion should rely upon exercise alone for 
health. 
To a people living amid artificial sur- 
roundings, the kind of special knowledge 
that promotes physical efficiency may not 
be the most important of all knowledge, 
but it is at least a very necessary kind of 
knowledge. Upon this matter, Herbert 
Spencer’s judgment is still modern. We 
are probably tired of the threadbare sub- 
ject of ventilation, and bored at the men- 
tion of the low humidity of steam-heated 
buildings. But do many of us yet ven- 
tilate adequately, or suitably moisten our 
living air? Do we have in mind the direct 
relationship between ventilation and bad- 
air diseases in terms of facts sufficiently 
definite to spur us to action? Are we 
positive and militant in our knowledge of 
the sources of infection and the modes of 
transmission of communicable diseases; or, 
when we ought to act, do we remain supine 
because our knowledge is not a compelling 
knowledge? Can our typical undergrad- 
uate pass a simple examination even on 
such well-canvassed subjects as diphtheria 
antitoxin, deep cuts and tetanus, mosqui- 
toes and malaria, pasteurization of milk, 
sunlight and germs, spitting, dust, flies 
and the dozen other familiar newspaper 
topics; or is his knowledge even of these 
topics too entirely in journalese? 
