The Oregon daily journal., August 30, 1908, Page 33, Image 33

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PORTLAND, OREGON, SUNDAY HORNING, AUGUST 30, J 908
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And in Money
We Lose $600,
000,000 a Year
by Agencies That
Are : Preventable
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Hamilton
Toronto
Mllwaukao
Detroit
Cleveland
Chloigo
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KDenvar
Ban Franotaoo
Wilmington
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Reading
Provldnoe'
Hartford
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Atlanta
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Albany
Troy
Jersey City '
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Lowell
Camden
Louisville
Washington
Alexandria,
Cairo i
N A PROPOSAL for the establish,
ment of a school of sanitary science
the staggering fact has been brought
to light that this country xvantonly sacrifices
more than 400,000 lives per year.
That enormous number represents not
the lives of human beings who die of inev
itable disease ;but those whose fatal illnesses
were wholly, assuredly preventable.
The loss of that life which is all in all
to its possessors is only the first of the ter
rible train of disaster consequent upon the
nation's wasteful neglect of safeguards and
precautions which should be commonplaces
of the national existence. The next afflic
tion is the legacy of sorrow entailed upon all
to whom they were dear.
When, in considering the consequences
to the nation, the value of those lost lives is
estimated according to the famous Hunter
appraisement of the value of the citizen
$1500 in the united Statesit is apparent
that the people of this country, apart from
the callous cynicism with which they regard
the destruction of nearly half a million of
their fellows, hurl over the precipice of irre
coverable destruction wealth amounting to
$600,000,000.
Never in the history of the world has
$0 heinous a disregard of human life and
national resource been in evidence; for, al
though the decimations of pestilence and
full responsibility for sacrifice.
Horn far has it ro in astuminr that
tkf holocausts of war have raged from era responsibility; and how far can it got
ti era, there Ucs previously existed some ex- '
cuse of ignorance or warrant of necessity. REAT w th mitriJ, intHiul inJ
Actv. however, with almost ever ie. I r nxngl projrrti of th world durin th
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niucimiui truiur;, lucre umm wtu iv
7 adrtace comparable, in influence upon
tbfl luppmeu of mankind, with the increased
power then achieTed for th leaaeninjf of. gnffer
lag from diu and accident and for Cbo con
trol of tbo spread of petUence.
cret of disease and its prevention hid bare
to the wetl-nigh omniscient eye of sanitary
science, the plea of ignorance has been nulli
fied. Henceforth the nation must bear, the
With that huge, main fact as his text. Dr.
Norman Edward Ditman ha3 made public, in tho
Columbia University Quarterly, tho enormous
assemblage of facts he gathered upon the sub
ject of preventive medicine m tho United States
and upon the urgent need ior a school of sani
tary science and public health.
Here and there, in tins stato and that city,
there has been some measuro of comprehension
of the imperative need that presses upon tho
American poople, urging them to free their na
tional conscience from the guilt of such mur
derous neglect. But the impulses to betterment
has been little enough little enough for con
science' sake, and little enough for the immedi
ate, vital welfare of the nation. For, says Dr.
Ditman :
"The dangers arising from the spread of
contagious and other infectious diseases threaten
not the individual only, but the industrial life
and the whole fabric of modern society. While
our progress in the power to conquer disease has
been great, there is a growing tendency to allow
the glory of past achievement to obscure tho
magnitude of the field of tasks still undone.
Reforms and the adoption of new methods, whilo
accomplishing much, have had a tendency to
stimulate our efforts in directions where tho
greatest returns are not secured from the degree
of effort invested. While there has been an im
mense expentwe- of labor and means to cure
these eTils, comparatively little has been done to
prevent them."
It was Fasteur who said: "It is within tko
power of man in make all infectious diseases
disappear from the world."
'Eleven hundred deaths every day as a sac
rifice to the ignorance, carelessness and inertia
of the multitude!" Dr. Ditman ejclaims. "Tho
loss of 400,000 workers per year from prevent
able disease, representing an annual loss to tho
country of 6O0.0O0,0OO !"
He quotes two instances of the economio
gain resulting from the saving of human life.
England found that the lower death rate,
from what it was between 1S65 and 1575 to what
it' became between 1S0 and 1S9, meant the sar
in of-S58,04 lives. Tho English Tr capita
valuation of each life is 17 TO. England saved"
lives worth f5e,000,000, and withia ten Tears,
although th annual ou'Jar for sVnitarr im-
rroTenxsta has been 1-12,000,000, has saved mors 'America had their isolated cases, while in the
than the amount expended dunes fteea jtira. - United States, coincident with the dancer of
The decrease in Xow York city attendant
upon methods of prevention, rated at 5.89 per
1000 inhabitants for twenty-five years, has meant
the preservation of more than 3500 lives per
year, or 80,000 during the quarter of u century.
At the American valuation of human life, $1500
each, the saving amountedr.to $120,000,000. Tho
cases of sickness are usually r'koned as num
bering twenty-eight 1 for every death, while tho
average period of illness is nine days, and tho
daily wage forfeited is $1.50. Thus, without
. counting the cost of nursing and medicines, tho
total savingsto society in Xew York city for
that period was $150,240,000. Tho work of no
less than threo great hospitals was saved; thou
sands of wives were protected from widowhood;
many. thousands of children were preserved from
orphanage; hundreds of families were saved
from poverty.
This year, in Xew York alone. Dr. Ditman
calculates, if perfect sanitation were accom
plished, there would be' from '2'; .00" to 25,000
lives rescued from tho precipice of destruction
to which the nation's unguarded hordes aro
hastened, and 200,000 cases of severe illness
could be prevented.
HORRORS DAZE IMAGINATION
Imagination stands dazed in c 'n;e'ii''lation
of the horrors of the plague in thy history of
its ravages through the peoples of the earth. Ia
1348 every town and village of England was at
tacked; many places had but one-fourth part of
their population left alive; London lost 1m,0ih".
and, heaped in the pits of one larpe burying
gTOund, 50,000 victims were interred together.
In later years it has ooen deemed improbable
that there would be any more really extensivo
epidemics of the plague.
But one of the latest visitations cf that
dread disease took the lives of 164.0,:i victims
in Bombay, and in 1?P9 the scourge made its
first appearance in the we-'tern hemisphere, at
Santos, in Brazil. That fearful reappearance in
Hongkong, in 1S94, which preceded the decima
tion of Bombay, marked tho beginning of a
series of outbreaks in various parts of the world.
'Free from it for over two whole centuries,
. Great .Britain was once more, in 1?X). the scene
. .... ,
of a Dlarue outbreak, with a smaii out unde
niable outbreak in Glasgow. Mexico and South
Great Britain, San Francisco had it3 attack.'
For three years the plague smoldered, there be-j
fore it broke out afresh. During the year se
quent upon J une 30, 1903, San Francisco had
24 cases and 23 deaths.
Modern science has conquered the bubonio
plague. Tho identification of its bacillus and
the discovery of its transmission by. fleas and
rats gave tho cluo to its prevention. The dis
covery of the Yersin and Uaffkino serums fur
nished the means of cure.
The echoes of tho relentless struggle in
augurated by San Francisco upon the houi of
realization of the danger that confronted the
community ha-e not yet died away. The cityj
found itself faco to face with a scourge which
has been the horror of mankind for ages. Ita
very unfamiliarity terrified all into tho, most
rl rustic measures of sanitation, in accordance
with the most advanced moans provided by mod
ern science ; and science, used with promptness
and thoroughness, conquered.
Even so did science, combined with energy
and thoroughness, conquer yellow fever in Cuba,'
conquer it again in Fanama, and free the United,
States from the long, awful aeries of epidemics
which have cot untold treasures, uncounted '
lives, since the first recorded epidemic, in Thila
dclphia in 17l'3, when, within six weeks, out of
40.144 staple, 4041 perished literally, a fcci
mation. , ;
Cholera, conquered in Germany ly filtra
tion ; smallpox conquered by vaccination; scurry, 1
conquered by mere lime juice; beri-beri, con
quered by nitrogenous diet -these appalling dis
eases have all been overcome, almost upon the
heels of the dUcoTery of their safeguards by ex
perimental science, by the application of those
safeguards through intense national need or
aroused public opinion.
But the world and especially the Tnite 1
States still reeks with the morg-ue-L'ke miatrnts
of other di? ses, lorg ego proved to ! p-ever t
ablei yet continuing to ekirn their vi. ;.-;s ty
the hundred thousand, the rrst tnl iv r- I, r r
gTCSsive nation of the earth cheerful' ail t
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