October 18, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



507 



the improvement of people in the Philippines 

 by the establishment in each village of artesian 

 wells, so as to give them pure water, gives 

 such a marked decrease in the mortality and 

 such a marked increase in the health of the 

 inhabitants as to show a present condition 

 that is capable of wonderful amendment. 



I have dwelt at length upon the tropical 

 hygiene because my responsibilities have 

 brought me more into contact with that than 

 with the hygienic problems of the temperate 

 zone, where improvement in conditions is 

 necessarily less marked, because the conditions 

 are not so deplorable when attacked. The 

 range covered by the considerations of this 

 congress is so wide as to be almost bewilder- 

 ing, and the problems which are presented in 

 working out the improvements toward the 

 ideals that are presented are of course most 

 various and most complicated. The question 

 of the interference with personal liberty 

 through the insistence upon the enforcement 

 of health regulations does not present itself 

 in the temperate zone so often as in the trop- 

 ics, because the prevalence of infectious and 

 contagious diseases in the form of an epidemic 

 is not so great ; and yet, as we go on to regulate 

 how people shall live, we may expect to find, 

 as indeed we have already found, considerable 

 resistance and inertia that requires care and 

 caution in the drafting of drastic regulatory 

 provisions. Then the expense of the main- 

 tenance of a force sufficient to carry out useful 

 regulations is a most serious question in carry- 

 ing on a proper government. The number of 

 things that the government has to do has in- 

 creased so rapidly under the modern view that 

 the necessity for economy in administration 

 was never greater, while the burden of taxation 

 continues and must continue to increase. 



I do not doubt that we are beginning a 

 new epoch in humanity's history in this 

 country in reforms looking to the bodily 

 health of those less fortunately circumstanced 

 in their life's condition and work. The 

 study of vital statistics showing the pre- 

 valence of diseases and tracing their causes 

 must prompt the organized effort of govern- 

 mental forces to minimize the causes, and to 



furnish remedies for the evil. We have al- 

 ready begun the reform, in our pure food law, 

 in our mining bureau and our children's 

 bureau. 



We must initiate investigations into dis- 

 eases of particular occupations with a view to 

 regulation or prohibition. An example of this 

 we have in the heavy tax upon the making of 

 white sulphur matches. Still greater oppor- 

 tuntiea for improvement are before us. We 

 need to develop under governmental auspices 

 a bureau or a department, in which the funds 

 of the government shall be expended for re- 

 search of every kind useful in the practise 

 and enforcement of hygiene and preventive 

 medicine. That something of this sort may 

 grow out of the present United States Public 

 Health Service there is reason to believe, but 

 it will need far greater appropriations and a 

 widening of its scope of duties before it shall 

 have filled the place that the medical profession 

 of this country has a right to expect the 

 general government to create in the progress 

 of hygiene and demography. 



I have said little or nothing about the 

 vital statistics, not because I would minimize 

 its importance, but because my information 

 in respect to it is so faulty. I am very certain 

 that we are far behind other countries in the 

 completeness of our vital records, because we 

 are a new country, and we have not stopped 

 to make the needed registers of lives and 

 deaths and diseases and in the hurry of our 

 existence we have failed to appreciate the 

 enormous value that attaches to such statistics 

 in the study of improving methods and the 

 ascertainment of facts essential in the develop- 

 ment of hygienic science. 



I can not conceive any congress of a more 

 useful character than the one which it is now 

 my honor to welcome. It is useful, first, be- 

 cause a comparison of the ideas and the dis- 

 coveries and the theories of men engaged in 

 the same hunt for truth, and in the same 

 delving into the mysteries of nature, with a 

 view to wresting her secrets in the matter of 

 the cause and cure of disease, must result in a 

 general benefit to all who take part in such a 

 congress. The science of hygiene and sanita- 



