Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1917 — THREE PLAGUES [ARTICLE]

THREE PLAGUES

There are three great plagues afflicting The people of the United States —and the world-—►which could be wiped out by a there fraction of the effort, genius, money and discipline that are required in conducting a great war. They are typhoid, malaria and tuberculosis. Typhoid is the easiest killed pest Of the three. It has been banished from the United States army ami almost banished from the huge arid densely packed armies of Europe. This has been, accomplished by vaccinatjon, but careful disposal of the sewage will eradicate the disease ariywhere. It is - the * least aesthetic and the most needless of respectable ailments. Malaria, like yellow fever, is a mosquito disease.. Dr. William C. Gorgas is authority for the statecent that even in Panama malaria /an be abolished. Certainly in our own Country it ought to be as easy to frep- human beings from “chills” as to free cattle from the Texas fever, and the latter work is. going forward splendidly. The gain ip health and. working power which woiild result from this liberation is enormous. - Last and greatest of this trio of curses is tuberculosis; the oldest, the deadliest, the hardest to abolish. In fact, tuberculosis can. not be abolished until civilization gets rid of the sort of health-breaking, character-destroying^'poverty which' is maintained in” city slums and their village equivalents. We must make healthy, not only our hous'te. but everybody’s house, if we mean to fight free of consumption. Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise, one of nature’s grim, merciless, irastic methods of compelling us to. let air and sunlight into every hunan habitation. Consider, if you can, what the, vorld would be like with these

three plagues abolished. Nqj energydestroying “ague,” no typhoid, , no wasting intestinal fever, no gasping victims of tuberculosis. Twenty years would be more than enough to accomplish the whole work if a nation went at the task with half the enlightened patriotism that France has shown in the war, and success in such a- work would do more to-enrich "the world than the great conflict has done to impoverish it. *. Does it seem Utopian to dream that'some day the human race will wake ni> and attack its re;jl enemies in proper fasTiiori? - ' \