September 17^ 1915] 



SCIENCE 



365 



special organs such as eyes, ears, bowels, 

 teeth, nose and feet — all of which I propose 

 to group together under the term preventive 

 hygiene. We have achieved much in pre- 

 ventive medicine and preventive sanita- 

 tion, but we have as yet failed for the most 

 part in preventive hygiene, which is very 

 likely the most important of all. Here, 

 therefore, we may reasonably expect the 

 greatest progress in the nearest future. 

 Rightly studied, preventive hygiene will 

 include personal, domestic, family and so- 

 cial hygiene. It will deal with celibacy 

 and marriage, with sanitary house-keep- 

 ing, with the high cost of living, with food 

 economy, with domestic service, with child 

 hygiene, and with the proper conduct of 

 mature and elderly life, as well as with the 

 manifold aspects of strictly personal hy- 

 giene. It will in the future play perhaps 

 the principal part in solving many of the 

 problems of American life, health, pros- 

 perity and happiness. 



Our whole teaching of hygiene and sani- 

 tation has been grossly neglected, and our 

 teaching of physiology on both the higher 

 levels and the lower has never emphasized 

 as much as it should have done its practical 

 hygienic applications to the conduct of 

 life. Even our best medical schools have 

 paid but scant attention to these subjects, 

 while the instruction given in the public 

 schools has hitherto suffered from unin- 

 formed school committees and half-in- 

 formed teachers. The best teaching of to- 

 day is to be found, not in the test-books or 

 the schools, but in the leaflets issued and 

 distributed by certain leading boards of 

 health and life insurance companies. Surely 

 this is a scholastic reproach which should 

 not be allowed to stand. 



In conclusion I desire to express my ap- 

 preciation of the honor conferred upon me 

 by the gift of the office which I hold. The 

 American Public Health Association is to- 



day a splendid force in the land. Its 

 Journal, ^under the able editorship of our 

 devoted and faithful secretary, Professor 

 Gunn, is worthy of the great and truly in- 

 ternational body which it represents. It 

 is your duty and mine to strengthen Pro- 

 fessor Gunn's hands, to increase our mem- 

 bership and help on the good work which 

 is being done. If the Association con- 

 tinues to grow in numbers and in influence 

 along the broad paths already marked out, 

 remaining always democratic rather than 

 bureaucratic, it will be worthy of the great 

 name — "American" — which it bears. Two 

 of our component members, the Dominion 

 of Canada and the Republic of Mexico, 

 are bearing the heavy burdens of war — 

 the one foreign, the other civil. Both have 

 the liveliest sympathy of their confreres 

 in this association. It may seem to some 

 as if, under the shadow of a war charac- 

 terized as never before by the destruction 

 of life, efforts for its conservation through 

 hygiene and sanitation must be of little 

 moment. But it is not so. "After the 

 clouds the sun": and we believe that after 

 the present bloody conflicts are ended — 

 and may that time quickly come- — the races 

 of mankind will turn, as never before, and 

 with new longing, to the nobler pursuits 

 of life, liberty, health and happiness. 

 When that better day dawns the eternal 

 principles underlying the conservation 

 and promotion of normal life and health 

 will once more move and quicken the na- 

 tions as sunshine warms and quickens the 

 earth after storm. Meantime, we must 

 make ready for active and intelligent deal- 

 ing with the thousand new and pressing 

 problems which the present conflicts are 

 certain to bring before us. And to this 

 task we turn with cheerful courage. 



W. T. Sedgw^ick 

 Massachitsetts Institute of Technology 



