The Pest At Our Gates 
BY POULTNEY BIGELOW, M.A., F.R.G.S. 
A uthor 0/ •' The German Emperor and His Neighbors;' “ White Man’s Africa," etc. 
EDITORIAL NOTE.—Typhoid demands a human sacri¬ 
fice of forty-five thousand lives a year in this country alone. Of 
those stricken thousands many have been near and dear to readers 
of this article. Annually half a million Americans are attacked 
by this criminal, because entirely preventable, pest. Three fifths 
of them are zoage earners. At $1.50 o day this meates an annual 
loss of $18,000,000 in time during sickness. 
Why and zvhere does this ravaging pestilence breed? Our 
greatest harbors and stateliest rivers to-day are filth-ridden beds 
of pollution. Forty-five million persons are directly exposed. It 
amounts to a national scandal. 
Mr. Bigelow, in an impartial, painstaking investigation, has 
found conditions even worse in rural America than in the cities. 
But there is disgrace enough for all. His report is at once a 
warning and an indictment that applies to every section and city 
of the land. 
UR medical scientists are piling up tome upon tome ex¬ 
plaining the nature of many newly invented diseases; 
the colleges are turning out a stream of diplomated dis¬ 
ciples of .^sculapius all professing a knowledge of healing drugs; 
every state and county supports a staff of officials nominally for 
the benefit of public health—we are choking with vital statistics 
and dying for lack of common sense. 
The word pest I use because it covers roughly the several 
forms of epidemic which spring from dirty habits, from over¬ 
crowding, from municipal neglect—in short, from human, and 
therefore preventable, causes. 
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