416 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1003 



PUBLIC HEALTH AND SANITATION 



To provide for medicine is not to meet 

 the needs of public health. Its conserva- 

 tion involves phases of medicine, engineer- 

 ing, law-making and enforcement, sociol- 

 ogy, economics, education and many other 

 lines of endeavor. The construction of the 

 Panama Canal, that marvel of engineering, 

 has been possible only because at length 

 man has been able to stay the hand of the 

 grim destroyer. The annual death toll 

 under the De Lesseps regime was one out of 

 each ten. It is now less than one out of 

 each hundred amongst the white employees 

 in the canal zone. 



The same forces of nature which science 

 has tamed for man's use and pleasure, the 

 biological and physical sciences, have been 

 applied in the war with disease. Death 

 can be postponed and man's working 

 period lengthened. Man was in sad need 

 of improved weapons for his own defense 

 in view of the rapid multiplication of com- 

 plexities developed by modern life which 

 masses thousands together in a few minutes 

 and as quickly disperses them. Velocita- 

 mania — speed craze — is the microbe's 

 friend, whilst our high tension life gives 

 him the needed hold by increasing vital 

 waste. In turn, hygienic success and ex- 

 tension of man's active period means in- 

 creased population and adds new problems 

 to the many perplexities of the engineer, 

 the architect, the sociologist, the economist 

 and the statesman. And so we are mutu- 

 ally helpful and mutually harmful. 



We have come to recognize that the 

 individual's fitness is not only his prime 

 business but the public 's affair as well. In 

 increasing degree are we interfering with 

 personal liberty for the benefit of the race. 

 In line with this tendency we must un- 

 doubtedly expect to see colleges and schools 

 of public health, as differentiated from 

 medical schools, developed in our state uni- 



versities. They can only succeed by en- 

 listing all official and volunteer public 

 health agencies in the training of workers 

 for the many fields in which specialists are 

 required. They involve so much of basic 

 science and culture that they can be devel- 

 oped only in universities and will be most 

 successful in state or provincial or federal 

 universities. The members of the teaching 

 corps are already available if we add the 

 trained workers in official and voluntary 

 public health services, who can furnish the 

 practical work which in the language of 

 the medical school might be termed 

 "public health clinics." 



It is time that all those who are charged 

 with responsibility for the care of the 

 public health be trained before they under- 

 take that responsibility rather than to re- 

 ceive their training at the expense of the 

 public welfare. This the public realizes 

 and will demand. 



PEDAGOGY 



With the advance in professional and in- 

 dustrial education has come a very real 

 need for teachers' colleges which can not 

 be met by our normal school system. Their 

 proper home is in our universities since 

 they require on their staffs the very men 

 there available. They must be taught to 

 know and then to teach. We must teach 

 teachers of domestic science the mechanic 

 arts, agriculture, nursing, personal hygiene 

 and many other lines of work. These 

 embryo teachers must have their practise 

 schools to learn under proper direction the 

 art of teaching. A nice articulation must 

 be made, however, in order to see that in 

 our educational system there is neither un- 

 covered ground nor undue overlap. The 

 need of training drilled public servants 

 available for permanent positions in a 

 stable profession is so overwhelming that 

 there is little present danger of overlap. 



