Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 112, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1910 — Three Million Sick Every Day. [ARTICLE]

Three Million Sick Every Day.

We are making of health a cult, almost a religion. A few generations ago, says Walter Weyl in Success Magazine, the American lady considered robustness indelicate. In novels a vanishing waist, a becoming pallor and a tendency to swoon was the proper thing. Bad health was in good form. To-day good health is in good form. We have learned that a chalk-white face and a bad heart-action do not constitute true femininity, and that tuberculosis is caused by germs and not by a gentle, pious character. We have discovered that our health is a valuable asset. How valuable it is we cannot exactly figure, for while we know how many sheep and hogs there are in the country, we do not know exactly how many sick people there are. Nevertheless, if we apply a fairly accurate rule-of-thumb method worked out by a great English statistician we much conclude that there are almost three million people constantly sick in the United States —three million people sick every day of the three hundred and six-ty-five days. We lose an average of thirteen days a year in illness; altogether we give up to illness one thousand million days. Our sick-beds would reach from Portland, Me., far into the Pacific, and would always be occupied. In medicines, doctors’ services, hospital expenses and loss of earning power our annual sick bill is about two billions of dollars. And it is but a. part, for millions of us are sick without knowing it. We are well enough to be up, but not well enough to do our best work or get the best out of life.