nimal diseases, such as bovine tuberculosis, hog cholera, and Texas
fever. If they can be interested to utilize this knowledge in the care
of the health of their own families, and if they will provide health
facilities for their own families equal to those which they feel
necessary for their livestock, health conditions on the farm will show
rapid improvement. It is not that the farmer is indifferent to the
health of his family, but he has been _forced_ to have his herd tested
for tuberculosis, and he faces the possibility of heavy losses if he
does not have his hogs vaccinated for cholera, while he has not
appreciated that by preventative agencies the better health of his wife
and children may be insured and the cost of remedial treatment be
greatly lessened.

The purely economic aspects of sickness and disease have been a potent
factor in the health movement, particularly in cities. The vast sums
invested in life insurance have led progressive insurance companies into
extensive campaigns for promoting public health so that their risks may
be reduced. Vast quantities of the best health literature have been
distributed by some of the industrial insurance companies and they have
done much to demonstrate the value of public health nursing by employing
nurses who visit their policy holders. The extension of the insurance
method to health insurance, and the adoption of insurance by large
corporations for their employees has furthered this general movement,
and has revealed the tremendous economic losses due to preventable
sickness and disease. The farmer has failed to appreciate the purely
economic handicap under which he labors as a result of sickness and the
lack of adequate medical service and efficient public health
administration such as cities enjoy, because the cost of sickness is
distributed and is borne by each family and he has no means of knowing
the aggregate cost for the whole community. Were it possible for a rural
community to secure and have brought to its attention the total economic
loss due to sickness in a given year and the proportion which might be
preventable with a reasonable expenditure for better health facilities,
its people would doubtless become as interested in better health
administration as does the employer in a large city industry, and the
true economy of better health facilities would be apparent.

Few concrete studies of the losses occasioned by sickness in rural
communities have been ma