ngly falsified that report is morally guilty
of homicide through criminal negligence.

In Salt Lake City, in 1907, 43 deaths were ascribed to
tuberculosis--undoubtedly a broad understatement. And in the face of the
ordinance requiring registration of all cases of consumption, only five
persons were reported as ill of the disease. By all the recognized rules
of proportion, 43 deaths in a year meant at least 500 cases, which,
unreported, and hence in many instances unattended by any measures for
prevention of the spread of infection, constituted so many separate
radiating centers of peril to the whole community.

Why is such negligence on the part of physicians not punished? Because
health officials dread to offend the medical profession. In this
respect, however, a vast improvement is coming about. Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other States
are not afraid to prosecute and fine delinquents; nor are a growing
number of cities, among them Boston, New York, Rochester, Providence,
and New Orleans. The great majority of such prosecutions, however, are
for failure to notify the authorities of actively contagious diseases,
such as scarlet fever, diphtheria, and smallpox.

_"Business Interests" and Yellow Fever_

Epidemics are, nevertheless, in the early stages, often misreported. If
they were not--if early knowledge of threatening conditions were made
public--the epidemics would seldom reach formidable proportions.
But--and here is the national hygienic failing--the first instinct is to
conceal smallpox, typhoid, or any other disease that assumes epidemic
form. Repeated observations of this tendency have deprived me of that
knock-kneed reverence for Business Interests which is the glorious
heritage of every true American. As a matter of fact, Business Interests
when involved with hygienic affairs are always a malign influence, and
usually an incredibly stupid one. It was so in New Orleans, where the
leading commercial forces of the city, in secret meeting, called the
health officer before them and brow-beat him into concealing the
presence of yellow fever, lest other cities quarantine against their
commerce. And "concealed" it was, until it had secured so firm a
foothold that suppression was no longer practicable, and the city only
averted a tremendously disastrous epidemic by the best-fought and most
narrowly won battle ever waged in this country against an invading
disease.