m to eliminate the devil of headache; but the
underlying principle of "No health, no pay" is worthy of consideration.

This principle it is which, theoretically, we have adopted in the matter
of the public health. To our city, State, or national doctors we pay a
certain stipend (when we pay them at all) on the tacit understanding
that they are to keep us free from illness. With the cure of disease
they have no concern. The minute you fall ill, Mr. Taxpayer, you pass
into the hands of your private physician. No longer are you an item of
interest to your health officer, except as you may communicate your
disease to your fellow citizens. If he looks after you at all, it is not
that you may become well, but that others may not become ill through
you. Being less logical in our conduct than the Chinese, we, as a
people, pay little or no heed to the instructions of the public doctors
whom we employ. We grind down their appropriations; we flout the wise
and by no means over-rigorous regulations which they succeed in getting
established, usually against the stupid opposition of unprogressive
legislatures; we permit--nay, we influence our private physicians to
disobey the laws in our interest, preferring to imperil our neighbors
rather than submit to the inconvenience necessary to prevent the spread
of disease; and we doggedly, despite counsel and warning, continue to
poison ourselves perseveringly with bad air, bad water, and bad food,
the three B's that account for 90 per cent. of our unnecessary deaths.
Then, if we are beset by some well-deserved epidemic, we resentfully
demand to know why such things are allowed to occur. For it usually
happens that the virtuous public which fell asleep with a germ in its
mouth, wakes up with a stone in its hand to throw at the health
officer. Considering what we, as a people, do and fail to do, we get, on
the whole, better public health service than we deserve, and worse than
we can afford.

_Our Health Boards and Their Powers_

As a nation, we have no comprehensive health organization. The crying
need for one I shall point out in a future article. Our only Federal
guardianship is vested in the United States Public Health and Marine
Hospital Service, which, by some mystery of governmental construction,
got itself placed in the Treasury Department, where it certainly does
not belong. It is, with the exception of a few ancient political
appointees now relegated to unimportant posts, a high