616 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 827 



tious diseases or to contaminated and adul- 

 terated food supplies. We do not as yet 

 fully realize the value of human life as a 

 public asset. To estimate the financial 

 value of a human life to the community is 

 no more difficult as a mathematical prob- 

 lem than to compute an insurance premium 

 or to adjust a loss from fire. Judged from 

 the standards set by the decisions of the 

 courts of our country, reflecting as they do 

 in a way the opinion of the American peo- 

 ple as to the value of human life, it is con- 

 servative to say that the state of Illinois, 

 for example, lost during 1907 more than 

 $1,500,000 by deaths from typhoid fever 

 alone, a disease which, as we all know, is 

 due largely, if not wholly, to a neglect of 

 the proper laws of - sanitation. Every 

 death from a preventable disease appears 

 upon the debit side in the trial balance of 

 a community or of a nation. Commis- 

 sioner Evans, of Chicago, estimates that 45 

 per cent, of the deaths last year in that 

 city were caused by preventable diseases. 

 It is now nearly half a century since the 

 strife between the north and the south 

 culminated in that memorable and bloody 

 conflict known as the civil war. Nearly 

 every hearth-stone tells the sad story of a 

 broken family circle and the nation still 

 mourns the long list of her heroic dead. 

 Tremendous as was the loss of life in those 

 eventful four years, it is a significant fact 

 to be observed in this connection that 25 

 per cent, more deaths occur every year in 

 this country from tuberculosis than the 

 total loss of all of the union forces in 

 battle and from wounds during the entire 

 four years of the civil war. Unless this 

 disease is cheeked, it is said that there are 

 5,000,000 of people now living in the 

 United States who are destined to a pre- 

 mature death from this one cause. It is 

 difficult for us to realize the enormous loss 

 to the wealth of the country which this 



involves. A most careful study of this as- 

 pect of the question has been made by Pro- 

 fessor Glover, of the University of Michi- 

 gan. He has shown upon what would 

 seem to all of us, I am sure, a very con- 

 servative estimate of the earning capacity 

 of the individual during the working years 

 of his life, that the annual financial loss to 

 the United States is more than $36,000,000 

 — nearly twice the total bi-ennial income of 

 the state of Illinois. In other words, the 

 United States could well afford to spend 

 $36,000,000 each year if thereby this dis- 

 ease could be brought under the same con- 

 trol as are other preventable diseases. 



Much has been accomplished and more 

 is now being undertaken in the control of 

 diseases by our state and municipal boards 

 of health. However, their efforts are 

 directed for the most part to applying 

 known results and methods to preventing 

 the spread of diseases rather than to the 

 serious study of the scientific problems 

 arising from unhealthful conditions. Much 

 is also being accomplished by the scientific 

 departments of our educational institu- 

 tions, but the provision for scientific 

 research in these lines is altogether inade- 

 qiiate for future needs and for the magni- 

 tude of the opportunity at hand. We are 

 not doing for the public and private 

 health of our people anything like what we 

 are doing for the development of our com- 

 mercial and industrial interests. We have 

 in all our states and territories agricul- 

 tural experiment stations, some sixty in all, 

 the main function of which is the investi- 

 gation of questions relating to the promo- 

 tion and preservation of our national 

 agricultural interests. A magnificent and 

 important work is being accomplished at a 

 public expense of millions of dollars an- 

 nually, employing for this purpose more 

 than a thousand people. There is no doubt 

 in the mind of any public spirited man or 



