THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. LIV 



responsible for so few deaths relatively as not to be of 

 serious moment. 



7. In a broad sense the efforts of public health and 

 hygiene have been directed against the affections com- 

 prised in the first two items in the table, respiratory sys- 

 tem and alimentary tract. The figures in the first two 

 columns for the two five-year periods in the United States 

 indicate roughly the rate of progress such measures are 

 making, looking at the matter from a broad biological 

 standpoint. In reference to the respiratory system there 

 was a decline of 14 per cent, in the death rate between the 

 two periods. This is substantial. It is practically all 

 accounted for in phthisis, lobar pneumonia and bron- 

 chitis. For the alimentary tract the case is not so good 

 —indeed, far worse. Between the two periods the death 

 rate from this cause group fell only 1.8 per cent. Refer- 

 ence to Table VI shows how all the gain made in typhoid 

 fever was a great deal more than offset by diarrhea and 

 enteritis (under two), congenital debility and cancer. 

 Child welfare, both prenatal and postnatal, seems by long 

 odds the most hopeful direction in which public health 

 activities can expect at the present time substantially to 

 reduce the general death rate. This is a matter funda- 

 mentally of education. Ignorant and stupid people must 

 be taught, gently if possible, forcibly if necessary, how 

 to take care of a baby both before and after it is born. 

 It seems at present unlikely that mundane law will regard 

 feeding a two months old baby cucumber, or dispensing 

 milk reeking with deadly poison makers, as activities 

 accessory to first-degree murder. But we are moving in 

 that direction under the enthusiastic and capable leader- 

 ship of the Federal Children's Bureau. And there is 

 this further comfort, that if that final Judgment Seat, 

 before which so many believe we must all eventually ap- 

 pear, dispenses that even-handed justice which in decency 

 it must, many of our most prominent citizens who in the 

 financial interests of themselves or their class block every 

 move towards better sewage disposal, water and milk 



