ssed through
this most piteous children's ward in Chicago's public hospital. All but
twenty-nine of these children were under ten years of age, and doubtless
a number of them had been victims of that wretched tradition that a man
afflicted with this incurable disease might cure himself at the expense
of innocence.

Crusades against other infectious diseases, such as small-pox and
cholera, imply well-considered sanitary precautions, dependent upon
widespread education and an aroused public opinion. To establish such
education and to arouse the public in regard to this present menace
apparently presents insuperable difficulties. Many newspapers, so ready
to deal with all other forms of vice and misery, never allow these evils
to be mentioned in their columns except in the advertisements of quack
remedies; the clergy, unlike the founder of the Christian religion and
the early apostles, seldom preach against the sin of which these
contagions are an inevitable consequence: the physicians, bound by a
rigorous medical etiquette, tell nothing of the prevalence of these
maladies, use a confusing nomenclature in the hospitals, and write only
contributory causes upon the very death certificates of the victims.

Yet it is easy to predict that a society committed to the abolition of
infectious germs, to a higher degree of public health, and to a better
standard of sanitation will not forever permit these highly communicable
diseases to spread unchecked in its midst, and that a public, convinced
that sanitary science, properly supported, might rid our cities of this
type of disease, will at length insist upon its accomplishment. When we
consider the many things undertaken in the name of health and sanitation
it becomes easy to make the prediction, for public health is a magic
word which ever grows more potent, as society realizes that the very
existence of the modern city would be an impossibility had it not been
discovered that the health of the individual is largely controlled by
the hygienic condition of his surroundings. Since the first commission
to inquire into the conditions of great cities was appointed in
Manchester in 1844, sanitary science, both in knowledge and municipal
authority, has progressed until advocates of the most advanced measures
in city hygiene and preventive sanitary science boldly state that
neglected childhood and neglected disease are the most potent causes of
social insufficiency.

Certainly a plea co