We are glad to chronicle in our Outlook department from time to time the noble effort that many are putting forth in various ways for the benefit of humanity. This is especially true in the work against some of the diseases that prey upon the human family. The one thing which has demanded more effort of this kind than anything else has been the "great white plague," or tuberculosis, which sweeps away so many millions every year. Fear doubtless has been at the base of the effort, but many noble people who are connected with it are doing it from other motives than that.
The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, with its headquarters 105 East Twenty-second Street, New York City, the secretary of which is Dr. Livingstone Farrand, has been doing excellent work in enlightening the public. One of its last statements is that out of forty-one state legislatures in session during the season of 1913, laws dealing with tuberculosis were enacted in thirty states, while in thirty-four consideration was given to bills dealing with the prevention of the disease. Appropriations amounting to more than five million dollars have been set aside for the treatment and prevention of consumption by the various state legislatures, while Congress itself will probably set aside nearly one million dollars for the maintenance of the United States public health, the army and navy sanitoria, and the tuberculosis hospital of the District of Columbia.
Among the advances in legislative enactments worthy of note are the tuberculosis registration law of Colorado, laws providing for subsidies to local hospitals in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and an act for the establishing of county hospitals in Indiana. State bureaus have been provided in Ohio and California. Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Mississippi are the only states which have made no hospital or sanitorium provision for tuberculosis victims. Other states have as many as 33,000 beds for patients of this kind, and this is very inadequate.
Owing to these efforts, the death-rate from tuberculosis has declined steadily for the last twenty-five years. At the present time, the city death-rates in this country range from eight or nine per one thousand living to as high as thirty-five or forty, with the average around fifteen or sixteen.
The Needy Victims
There are at the present time, the National Association estimates, over a million consumptives in the United States, one third of whom, at least, are unable to provide for themselves the necessary treatment at home.
Running parallel with this are the efforts to check bovine tuberculosis, or tuberculosis among cattle. It is the greatest scourge of the livestock grower at the present time. Efforts are being put forth in some of the states to have all the dairy herds tested by tuberculin, the infected cattle either killed or separated from the healthy herds. Some of the states are paying for the cattle thus killed. Others are inducing the farmers to meet this themselves, and build up healthy herds as being a paying investment in the end. At the present time, California has a law prohibiting importation of stock into the state unless tested by a trained veterinarian. Wisconsin is holding the disease in check.
Work in Wisconsin
In fact, Wisconsin seems to be the leading state in its war against tuberculosis. The disease has attracted more attention in that commonwealth than anywhere else. At least Wisconsin has done more in an educational way for the prevention of this awful plague. It has its society, or anti-tuberculosis association, as the center of the movement; and this association has adhered strictly to the policy of a purely educational campaign. It has been besieged to do relief work, but has consistently held that that was not its purpose; and there are two good reasons for this: in the first place, the funds of the association would be inadequate to do any great amount of local work; and secondly, it would be inclined to exhaust the limited resources of the association in work that was purely local. Therefore the association has confined its efforts to educational work, and the policy has been vindicated. Advanced legislation has resulted, and there have many sanitoria been established, with visiting nurses and medical inspection, in the principal cities of the state. These agencies, established as the result of the educational campaign, are doing very much more than the association itself could.
Wide-Spread Effects
One of the unique things which Wisconsin has done is to carry on a propaganda of gospel sanitation and good health to the rural sections of the state. A lecturer and an assistant have been sent out on a motorcycle, visiting the most remote sections of the state, giving lectures, holding private consultations, and posting the fences and bill-boards with placards calling attention to the most important rules of right living. It is an economical propaganda, too, for the two men travel on one machine, carrying with them a complete camp equipment, which makes them independent of hotels, as well as railways. They sleep out-of-doors, and do most of their own cooking. With their outfit they carry a stereopticon machine with over one hundred slides for their evening lectures, which are usually given out-of-doors. The assistant operates the picture machine from the luggage carrier of the motorcycle, it being connected with the gas-tank which supplies the headlight for riding at night-time. As many people can be reached by this means in a given time in the rural sections as by the ordinary city lecture tour, and in all probability the lecturer gets a great deal better attention in the country than he would in the city, because of the fewer attractions in the country.
By carrying their own camping outfit, the cost of the work is comparatively small, and the officers of the association consider that the large number of people reached by the rural campaign offers a greater return for the money expended than similar work formerly done in cities. This campaign will be carried on until late in November.
The "Signs of the Times" wishes to say, God bless these men in their work, and help the people to appreciate this work that is done for them. It surely is not God's design that His people should die of consumption, and in this enlightened age there should be far fewer deaths than there are. Just sufficient exercise, an abundance of pure, fresh air — night and day alike — and a superabundance of food where such can be taken, will, if used betimes, cure most cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. We would say to all our readers who are affected or who have relatives that are victims of the dread disease, Give heed to the instructions.
