Diphtheria 11 cases 2 deaths Measles 20 1 Typhoid
fever 4 2 Scarlet fever 13 1 Whooping-cough 20 3
Acute intestinal trouble 45 10 Influenza 16 1
Tuberculosis 6 1 Pneumonia 9 4
“What do you think of it?” asked Dr. Strong.
“It’s a bad showing.”
“It’s a bad showing and a bad property. Why don’t you buy it?”
“Who? I? Are you advising me to buy a job-lot of diseases?” queried Mr.
Clyde.
“Well—as a protective investment. We’d be safe here if those tenements
were run differently.”
“But we aren’t in touch with them at all. They are around the corner on
another block.”
“Nevertheless, visitors pass daily between your house and Saddler’s
Shacks. One of the young men from there delivers bread, often with his
bare and probably filthy hands. Two of the women peddle fruit about the
neighborhood. What Saddler’s Shacks get in the way of disease, you may
easily get by transmission from them. Further, the sanitary
arrangements of the shacks are primitive, not to say prehistoric, and,
incidentally, illegal. They are within the area of fly-travel from
here, so both the human and the winged disease-bearers have the best
possible opportunity to pick up infection in its worst form.”
“Ugh!” said Mrs. Sharpless. “I’ll never eat with a fly again as long as
I live!”
“Wouldn’t it be a simple matter to have the Bureau of Health condemn
the property?” asked Mr. Clyde.
“It would not.” Dr. Strong spoke with curt emphasis.
“Certain features, you said, are illegal.”
“But pull is still stronger than law in this city.”
“Who owns Saddler’s Shacks?” asked Grandma Sharpless, going with
characteristic directness to the point.
“Mrs. Carson Searle.”
“Why, then, it’s all right,” asserted Mrs. Clyde. “I know Mrs. Searle
very well. She’s a leader in church and charitable work. Of course, she
doesn’t know about the condition of the property.”
“She knows enough about it,” retorted Dr. Strong grimly, “to go to the
Mayor over the Health Officer’s head, and put a stop to Dr. Merritt’s
order for the premises to be cleaned up at the owner’s expense. She
wants her profits undisturbed. And now, before the conference breaks
up, I propose that we organize the Household Protective Association.”
“Oh, can we children belong?” cried Julia.
“Of course. There are offices and honors enough for all. Mr. Clyde
shall be president; Mrs. Sharpless, vice-president and secretary; Mrs.
Clyde, treasurer, and each one of the rest of you shall have a
committee. Katie, I appoint you chairman of the Committee on Food, and
if any more flies get into your kitchen, you can report ‘em to the
Committee on Flies, Miss Bettina Clyde, chairman; motto, ‘Thwat that
fly!’ Manny, you like to go to the farm; you get the Committee on Milk
Supply. Junkum, your committee shall be that of school conditions.
Bobs, water is your element. As Water Commissioner you must keep watch
on the city reports. I’ll see that they are sent you regularly; and the
typhoid records.”
“You haven’t left anything for me,” protested Charley.
“Haven’t I! You’ve got one of the biggest of all jobs, air. If the
windows aren’t properly wide when the house is asleep, I want to know
it from you, and you’ll have to get up early to find out. If the Street
Cleaning Department sweeps the air full of dust because it’s too lazy
to wash down the roadway first, we’ll make a committee report to the
Mayor.”
Bettina, _alias_ Toots, _alias_ Twinkles, _alias_ the Cherub, trotted
over and laid two plump hands on the doctor’s knee.
“Ain’t you goin’ to be anyfing in the play?” she asked.
“I?” said Dr. Strong. “Of course, Toots. Every real association has to
have officers and membership, you know. I’m the Member.”
III.
REPAIRING BETTINA
“Medicine would be the ideal profession if it did not involve giving
pain,” said Dr. Strong, setting a paper-weight upon some school reports
which had just come in.
“You’ve been here three months and you haven’t hurt any one yet,” said
Mr. Clyde easily.
“No. I’ve been cautious, and perhaps a little cowardly. My place as
Chinese doctor has been such a sinecure that I’ve let things go.
Moreover, I’ve wanted to gain Mrs. Clyde’s confidence as much as
possible, before coming to the point.”
The expression of Mr. Clyde’s keen, good-humored face altered and
focused sharply. He scrutinized the doctor in silence. “Well, let’s
have it,” he said at length. “Is it my wife?”
“No. It’s Bettina.”
The father winced. “That baby!” he said. “Serious?”
“On the contrary, quite simple. _If_ it is handled wisely. But it
means—pain. Not a great deal; but still, pain.”
“An operation?”
Dr. Strong nodded. “Merely a minor one. I’ve sounded Mrs. Clyde,
without her knowing it, and she will oppose it. Mrs. Sharpless, too, I
fear. You know how women dread suffering for the children they love.”
Again Mr. Clyde winced. “It’s—it’s necessary, of course,” he said.
“Not to do it would be both stupid and cruel. Shall we call in the
women and have it out with them?”
For reply, Mr. Clyde pressed a button and sent the servant who
responded, for Mrs. Clyde and her mother. Grandma Sharpless arrived
first, took stock of the men’s grave faces, and sat down silently,
folding her strong, competent hands in her lap. But no sooner had Mrs.
Clyde caught sight of her husband’s face than her hand went to her
throat.
“What is it?” she said. “The children—”
“Nothing to be alarmed about, Mrs. Clyde,” said Dr. Strong quickly. He
pushed a chair toward her. “Sit down. It’s a question of—of what I
might call carpenter-work”—the mother laughed a nervous relief—“on
Betty.”
“Betty?” Her fears fluttered in her voice. “What about Betty?”
“She needs repairing; that’s all.”
“I don’t know what you mean! Is she hurt?”
“Not at all. She is breathing wrong. She breathes through her mouth.”
“Oh!” There was reassurance and a measure even of contempt in Mrs.
Clyde’s voice. “Lots of children do that. Perhaps she’s got a little
cold.”
“It isn’t that. This is no new thing with her. She is a
mouth-breather.”
“I’ll see that it’s corrected,” promised the mother.
“Only one thing can correct it,” said Dr. Strong gravely. “There’s a
difficulty that must be removed.”
“You mean an operation? On that baby? Do you know that she isn’t five
yet? And you want to cut her with a knife—”
“Steady, Myra,” came Mr. Clyde’s full, even speech. “Dr. Strong doesn’t
_want_ to do anything except what he considers necessary.”
“Necessary! Supposing she does breathe through her mouth! What excuse
is that for torturing her—my baby!”
“I’ll answer that, Mrs. Clyde,” said the doctor, with patient
politeness. Walking over to the window he threw it up and called, “Oh,
Tootles! Twinkles! Honorable Miss Cherub, come up here. I’ve got
something to show you.” And presently in came the child, dragging a
huge and dilapidated doll.
She was a picture of rosy health, but, for the first time, the mother
noted the drooping of the lower jaw, and the slight lift of the upper
lip, revealing the edges of two pearly teeth. Dr. Strong took from a
drawer a little wooden box, adjusted a lever and, placing the ear
pieces in Betty’s ears, bade her listen. But the child shook her head.
Again he adjusted the indicator. This time, too, she said that she
heard nothing. Not until the fourth change did she announce delightedly
that she heard a pretty bell, but that it sounded very far away.
“Now we’ll try it on mother,” said the experimenter, and added in a low
tone as he handed it to Mrs. Clyde, “I’ve set it two points less loud
than Betty’s mark. Can you hear it?”
Mrs. Clyde nodded. A look of dread came into her eyes.
“Now, Tootles, open your mouth,” directed the doctor, producing a
little oblong metal contrivance.
“I haven’t got any sore froat,” objected the young lady.
“No, but I want to look at the thoughts inside your head,” he explained
mysteriously.
With entire confidence the child opened her mouth as wide as possible,
and Dr. Strong, setting the instrument far back against her tongue,
applied his eye to the other end.
“All right, Toots,” he said, after a moment. “Get your breath, and then
let mother look.”
He showed Mrs. Clyde how to press the tiny button setting aglow an
electric lamp and lighting up the nasal passages above the throat,
which were reflected on a mirror within the contrivance and thus made
clear to the eye. Following his instructions, she set her eye to the
miniature telescope as the physician pressed it against the little
tongue.
“Well, Betty,” said Dr. Strong, as the implement was again withdrawn,
“you’ve got very nice thoughts inside that wise little head of yours.
Now you can continue bringing up your doll in the way she should go.”
As the door closed behind her the mother turned to Dr. Strong.
“Is she going to be deaf?” she asked breathlessly.
“Of course not,” he reassured her. “That will be taken care of. What
did you see above the back of the throat?”
“Little things like tiny stalactites hanging down.”
“Adenoids.”
“Where could she have gotten adenoids?” cried Mrs. Clyde.
“From her remotest imaginable ancestor, probably.”
“Why, aren’t they a disease?”
“No. An inheritance. The race has always had them. Probably they’re
vestigial salivary glands, the use of which we’ve outgrown.
Unfortunately they may overdevelop and block up the air-passages. Then
they have to come out.”
For the first time in the conference Grandma Sharpless gathered force
and speech.
“Young man,” she said solemnly—rather accusingly, in fact—“if the Lord
put adenoids in the human nose he put ‘em there for some purpose.”
“Doubtless. But that purpose, whatever it may have been, no longer
exists.”
“Everything in the human body has some use,” she persisted.
“Had,” corrected Dr. Strong. “Not has. How about your appendix?”
Mrs. Sharpless’s appendix, like the wicked, had long since ceased from
troubling, and was now at rest in alcohol in a doctor’s office, having,
previous to the change of location, given its original proprietress the
one bad scare of her life. Therefore, she blinked, not being provided
with a ready answer.
“The ancestors of man,” said Dr. Strong, “were endowed with sundry
organs, like the appendix and the adenoids, which civilized man is
better off without. And, as civilized man possesses a God-given
intelligence to tell him how to get rid of them, he wisely does so when
it’s necessary.”
“What have the adenoids to do with Betty’s deafness?” asked Mr. Clyde.
“Everything. They divert the air-currents, thicken the tubes connecting
throat and ear, and interfere with the hearing. Don’t let that little
deficiency in keenness of ear bother you, though. Most likely it will
pass with the removal of the adenoids. Even if it shouldn’t, it is too
slight to be a handicap. But I want the child to be repaired before any
of the familiar and more serious adenoid difficulties are fixed on her
for life.”
“Are there others?” asked Mrs. Clyde apprehensively.
“Oh, every imaginable kind. How could it be otherwise? Here’s the very
first principle of life, the breath, being diverted from its proper
course, in the mouth-breather; isn’t a general derangement of functions
the inevitable result? The hearing is affected, as I’ve shown you
already. The body doesn’t get its proper amount of oxygen, and the
digestion suffers. The lungs draw their air-supply in the wrong way,
and the lung capacity is diminished. The open mouth admits all kinds of
dust particles which inflame the throat and make it hospitable to
infection. By incorrect breathing the facial aspect of the
mouth-breather is variously modified and always for the worse; since
the soft facial bones of youth are altered by the continual striking of
an air-current on the roof of the mouth, which is pushed upward,
distorting the whole face.”
“None of _our_ children are distorted. You won’t find a better-looking
lot anywhere,” challenged Mrs. Sharpless, the grandmother’s pride up in
arms.
“True. None of them has had overdeveloped adenoids, except Betty. The
others all breathe through their noses. See how different their mouths
are from Betty’s lifting upper lip—very fascinating now, but
later—Well, I’ve gone so far as to prepare an object-lesson for you.
Three extreme types of the mouth-breathers are here from school by my
invitation to have some lemonade and cakes. They are outside now. When
they come in, I want each of you to make an analysis of one of them,
without their seeing it, of course. Talk with them about their work in
school. You may get ideas from that. Mrs. Sharpless, you take the
taller of the girls; Mrs. Clyde, you study the shorter. The boy goes to
you, Mr. Clyde.”
The trio of visitors entered, somewhat mystified, but delighted to be
the guests of their friend, Dr. Strong, who had a faculty of
interesting children. So shrewdly did he divert and hold their
attention that they concluded their visit and left without having
suspected the scrutiny which they had undergone.
“Now, Mrs. Clyde,” said Dr. Strong, after the good-byes were said,
“what about your girl?”
“Nothing in particular except that she’s mortally homely and doesn’t
seem very bright.”
“Homely in what respect?”
“Well, hatchet-faced, to use a slang term.”
“It’s not a slang term any more; it’s a medical term to describe a
typical result of mouth-breathing. The diversion of the breath destroys
the even arch of the teeth, pushes the central teeth up, giving that
squirrel-like expression that is so unpleasantly familiar, lengthens
the mouth from the lower jaw’s hanging down, and sharpens the whole
profile to an edge, and an ugly one. Adenoids!”
“My tall girl I thought at first was dull, but I found the poor thing
was a little deaf,” said Grandma Sharpless. “She’s got a horrid skin;
so sallow and rough and pimply. I don’t think her digestion is good. In
fact, she said she had trouble with her stomach.”
“Naturally. Her teeth are all out of place from facial malformation
caused by mouth-breathing. That means that she can’t properly chew her
food. That means in turn that her digestion must suffer. That, again,
means a bad complexion and a debilitated constitution. Adenoids! What’s
your analysis, Mr. Clyde?”
“That boy? He’s two grades behind where he should be in school. It
takes him some time to get the drift of anything that’s said to him. I
should judge his brain is weak. Anyway, I don’t see where he keeps it,
for the upper part of his face is all wrong, the roof of the mouth is
so pushed up. The poor little chap’s brain-pan must be contracted.”
“Perfectly correct, and all the result of adenoids again. The boy is
the worst example I’ve been able to find. But all three of the children
are terribly handicapped; one by a painful homeliness, one by a ruined
digestion, and the boy by a mental deficiency—and all simply and solely
because they were neglected by ignorant parents and still more ignorant
school authorities.”
“Would you have the public schools deal with such details?” asked Mr.
Clyde.
“Certainly. Have you ever heard what Goler, the Health Officer of
Rochester, asked that city? ‘Oughtn’t we to close the schools and
repair the children?’ he asked, and he kept on asking, until now
Rochester has a regular system of looking after the noses, mouths, and
eyes of its young. They want their children, in that city, to start the
battle of life in fighting trim.”
“But you don’t see many misshapen children about,” objected Mrs.
Sharpless.
“Then it’s because you don’t look. Call to your mind Hogarth’s
caricatures. Do you remember that in his crowds there are always
clubfooted, or humpbacked, or deformed people? In those days such
deformities were very common because medical science didn’t know how to
correct them in the young. To-day facial deformities, to the scientific
eye, are quite as common, though not as obvious. We’re just learning
how to correct them, and to know that the hatchet-face is a far more
serious clog on a human being’s career than is the clubfoot.”
“If Betty had a clubfoot, of course—” began Mrs. Clyde.
“Of course, you’d have it repaired at whatever cost of suffering. You’d
submit her to a long and serious operation; and probably to the
constant pain of a rigid iron frame upon her leg for months, perhaps
years. To obviate the deformity you’d consider that not too high a
price to pay, and rightly. Well, here is the case of a more
far-reaching malformation, curable by a minor operation, without
danger, mercifully quick, with only the briefest after-effects of pain,
and you draw back from it. Why?”
“The thought of the knife on that little face. Is—is that all there is
to be done?”
“No, there are the teeth. They should be looked to.”
“Nonsense! They’re only first teeth,” said
Grandma Sharpless vigorously. “What does a doctor know about teeth?”
“Lots, if he knows his business. There would be fewer dyspeptics if
physicians in general sent their patients to the dentist more promptly,
and kept them in condition to chew their food.”
“That’s all very well, when people have their real, lasting teeth,”
returned the grandmother. “But Betty’s first set will be gone in a few
years. Then it will be time enough to bother the poor child.”
“Apparently, Mrs. Sharpless,” said Dr. Strong mildly, “you consider
that teeth come in crops, like berries; one crop now, a second and
distinct crop later. That isn’t the way growth takes place in the human
mouth. The first teeth are to the second almost what the blossom is to
the fruit. I shall want immediately to take Betty to the dentist, and
have him keep watch over her mouth with the understanding that he may
charge a bonus on every tooth he keeps in after its time. The longer
the first lot lasts, the better the second lot are. But there is no use
making the minor repairs unless the main structure is put right first.”
“I must see Betty,” said Mrs. Clyde abruptly, and left the room. Mrs.
Sharpless followed. “Now comes the first real split.” Dr. Strong turned
to Mr. Clyde. “They’re going to vote me down.”
“If it comes to a pinch,” said Mr. Clyde quietly, “my wife will accept
my decision.”
“That is what I want to avoid. Where would my influence with her be, if
I were obliged to appeal to you on the very first test of professional
authority? No, I shall try to carry this through myself, even at the
risk of having to seem a little brutal.”
Mr. Clyde lifted his eyebrows, but he only nodded, as the door opened
and the two women reentered.
“Doctor,” said Mrs. Clyde, “if, in a year from now, Betty hasn’t
outgrown the mouth-breathing, I—I—you may take what measures you think
best.”
“In a year from now, the danger will be more advanced. There is not the
faintest chance of correction of the fault without an operation.”
“I can’t help it! I can’t stand the thought of it, now,” said Mrs.
Clyde brokenly. “You should see her, poor baby, as she looks now,
asleep on the lounge in the library, and even you, Doctor” (the doctor
smiled a little awry at that), “couldn’t bear to think of the blood and
the pain.” She was silent, shuddering.
“My dear Mrs. Clyde, the blood will be no more than a nosebleed, and
the pain won’t amount to much, thanks to anaesthesia. Let me see.” He
stepped to the door and, opening it softly, looked in, then beckoned to
the others to join him.
The child lay asleep on her side, one cupped pink hand hanging, the
other back of her head. Her jaw had dropped and the corner of the mouth
had slackened down in an unnatural droop. The breath hissed a little
between the soft lips. Dr. Strong closed the door again.
“Well?” he said, and there was a suggestion of the sternness of
judgment in the monosyllable.
“I am her mother.” Mrs. Clyde faced him, a spot of color in each cheek.
“A mother is a better judge of her children than any doctor can be!”
“You think so?” said Dr. Strong deliberately. “Then I must set you
right. Do you recall sending Charley away from the table for
clumsiness, two days ago?”
“Why, yes.” Mrs. Clyde’s expressive eyes widened. “He overturned his
glass, after my warning him.”
“And once last week for the same thing?”
“Yes, but what—”
“Pardon me, do you think your mother-judgment was wise then?”
“Well, really, Dr. Strong,” said Mrs. Clyde, flushing, “you will hardly
assume the right of control of the children’s manners—”
“This is not a question of manners. There is where your error lies,”
interrupted the doctor. “Against your mother-judgment I set my
doctor-judgment, and I tell you now”—his voice rose a little from its
accustomed polished smoothness, and took on authority—“I tell you that
the boy is no more responsible for his clumsiness than Betty is for bad
breathing. It’s a disease, very faint but unmistakable.”
“Not Charley!” said his father incredulously, “Why, he’s as husky as a
colt.”
“He will be, please God, in a few years, but just now he has—don’t be
alarmed; it’s nothing like so important as it sounds—he has a slight
heart trouble, probably the sequel to that light and perhaps mismanaged
diphtheria attack. It’s quite a common result and is nearly always
outgrown, and it shows in almost unnoticeable lack of control of hands
and feet. I observed Charley’s clumsiness long ago; listened at his
heart, and heard the murmur there.”
“And you never told us!” reproached the grandmother.
“What was the use? There’s nothing to be done; nothing that needs to be
done, except watch, and that I’ve been doing. And I didn’t want to
worry you.”
“Then I’ve been punishing him for what wasn’t his fault,” said Mrs.
Clyde in a choked voice.
“You have. Don’t punish Betty for what isn’t hers,” countered the
physician, swiftly taking advantage of the opening. “Give her her
chance. Mrs. Clyde, if Betty were my own, she could hardly have wound
herself more closely around my heartstrings. I want to see her grow
from a strong and beautiful child to a strong and beautiful girl, and
finally to a strong and beautiful woman. It rests with you. Watch her
breathing to-night, as she sleeps—and tell me to-morrow.”
He rose and left the room. Mr. Clyde walked over and put a hand softly
on his wife’s soft hair; then brushed her cheek with his lips.
“It’s up to you, dearest,” he said gently.
Three days later, Betty, overhanging the side fence, was heard, by her
shamelessly eavesdropping father, imparting information to her
next-door neighbor and friend.
“You’d ought to get a new nothe, Thally. It don’t hurt much, an’
breathin’ ith heapth more fun!”
Pondering a chain of suggestions induced by this advice, Mr. Clyde
walked slowly to the house. As was his habit in thought, he proceeded
to rub the idea into his chin, which was quite pink from friction by
the time he reached the library. There he found Dr. Strong and Mrs.
Sharpless in consultation.
“What are you two conspiring about?” he asked, ceasing to rub the
troubled spot.
“Matter of school reports,” answered the doctor. He glanced at the
other’s chin and smiled. “And what is worrying you?” he asked.
“I’m wondering whether I haven’t made a mistake.”
“Quite possibly. It’s done by some of our best people,” remarked the
physician dryly.
“Not a pleasant possibility in this case. You remember quoting
Rochester as to closing the schools and repairing the children. To-day,
as I heard Betty commenting on her new nose, it suddenly came to me
that I was obstructing that very system of repairs by which she is
benefiting, for less fortunate youngsters in our schools.”
“You!” said Dr. Strong in surprise.
“As president of the Public Health League. The Superintendent of
Schools came to me with a complaint against Dr. Merritt, the Health
Officer, who, he claimed, was usurping authority in his scheme for a
special inspection system to examine all schoolchildren at regular
intervals.”
“Ought to have been established long ago,” declared Dr. Strong.
“The Superintendent thinks otherwise. He claims that it would interfere
with school routine. It’s the duty of the health officials, he says, to
control epidemics from without, to keep sickness out of the schools,
not to hunt around among the children, scaring them to death about
diseases that probably aren’t there.”
Dr. Strong muttered something which Grandma Sharpless pretended not to
hear. “And you’ve agreed to support him in that attitude?” he queried.
“Well, I’m afraid I’ve half committed myself.”
“Heaven forgive you! Why, see here, Clyde, your dodo of a
superintendent talks of keeping sickness out of the schools. Doesn’t
that mean keeping sickness out of the pupils? There’s just one way to
do that: get every child into the best possible condition of
repair—eyes, ears, nose, throat, teeth, stomach, everything, and
maintain them in that state. Then disease will have a hard time
breaking down the natural resistance of the system. Damaged organs in a
child are like flaws in a ship’s armor-plate; a vital weakening of the
defenses. And remember, the child is always battling against one
besieging germ or another.”
“Why can’t medical science wipe out the germs?” demanded Mrs.
Sharpless. “It’s always claiming to do such wonders.”
“In a few instances it can. In typhoid we fight and win the battle from
the outside by doing that very thing. In smallpox, and to a lesser
extent in diphtheria, we can build up an effective artificial barrier
by inoculation. But, as medical men are now coming to realize, in the
other important contagions of childhood, measles, whooping-cough, and
scarlet fever, we must fight the disease from inside the individual;
that is, make as nearly impregnable as possible the natural
fortifications of the body to resist and repel the invasion. That is
what school medical inspection aims at.”
“You wouldn’t rank whooping-cough and measles with scarlet fever, would
you?” said Mrs. Sharpless incredulously.
“Why not? Although scarlet fever has the worst after-effects,—though
not much more serious than those of measles,—the three are almost equal
so far as the death-rate is concerned.”
“Surely not!” protested the old lady. “Why, I’d rather have measles in
the house ten times, or whooping-cough either, than scarlet fever
once.”
“You’re about ten times as likely to have.”
She looked puzzled. “But what did you mean by saying that one of ‘em is
as bad as the other?”
“That it’s as dangerous to the community, though not to the
individual.”
“Just a little deep for me, too,” confessed Mr. Clyde.
“Yet it’s perfectly simple. Here, take an example. Would you rather be
bitten by a rattlesnake or a mosquito?”
“A mosquito, of course.”
“Naturally. Yet a rattlesnake country is a good deal safer than a
mosquito country. You wouldn’t hesitate, on account of your health, to
move to Arizona, where rattlesnakes live?”
“I suppose not.”
“But you _would_ be afraid to establish your family in the malarious
swamps of the South?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, people who die of malaria die of mosquito bite, since the
mosquito is the only agency of infection. Thus, it reduces to this:
that while the individual rattler is more dangerous than the individual
mosquito, the mosquito, in general, kills her thousands where the snake
kills one. Now—with considerable modification of the ratio—scarlet
fever is the rattlesnake; whooping-cough and measles are the
mosquitoes. It is just as important to keep measles out of a community
as it is to shut out scarlet fever. In fact, if you will study the
records of this city, you will find that in two out of the last three
years, measles has killed more people than scarlet fever, and
whooping-cough more than either of them.”
“What are we going to do about it?” asked the practical-minded Mr.
Clyde.
“Ah, if some one would only tell us that! In measles the worst of the
harm is done before the disease announces itself definitely. The most
contagious stage is previous to the appearance of the telltale rash.
There’s nothing but a snuffling nose, and perhaps a very little fever
to give advance notice that the sufferer is a firebrand.”
“Well, you can’t shut a child out of school for every little sore
throat,” observed Mrs. Sharpless.
“As to that I’m not so sure,” replied the physician slowly and
thoughtfully. “A recent writer on school epidemics has suggested
educating the public to believe that every sore throat is contagious.”
“That isn’t true, is it?” asked Mr. Clyde.
“No. Personally I believe that, while a physician is often justified in
deceiving his patient, he is never justified in fooling the public. In
the long run they find him out and his influence for good is lessened.
Yet that sore-throat theory is near enough true to be a strong
temptation. Every sore throat is suspicious; that isn’t too much to
say. And, with a thorough school-inspection system, it is quite
possible that epidemics could be headed off by isolating the
early-discovered cases of sore throat. But, an epidemic of the common
contagions, once well under way, seems to be quite beyond any certainty
of control.”
“Do you mean to say that quarantine and disinfection and isolation are
all useless?” asked Mr. Clyde.
“No. I won’t go as far as that. They may exercise a check in some
cases. But I will say this: that all our cumbersome and expensive and
often harassing hygienic measures in the contagious diseases haven’t
made good. Obviously, if they had, we should see a diminution of the
ills which they are supposed to limit. There is no diminution. No,
we’re on the wrong tack. Until we know what the right tack is, we
perhaps ought to keep on doing what we can in the present line. It’s a
big, complicated subject, and one that won’t be settled until we find
out what scarlet fever, measles, and whooping-cough really are, and
what causes them. While we’re waiting for the bacteriologist to tell us
that, the soundest principle of defense that we have is to keep the
body up to its highest pitch of resistance. That is why I support
medical inspection for schools as an essential measure.”
“To repair the children without closing the schools, if I may modify
Dr. Goler’s epigram,” suggested Mr. Clyde.
“Exactly. Eventually we shall have to build as well as repair. A very
curious thing is happening to Young America in the Eastern States. The
growing generation is shrinking in weight and height.”
“Which is almost contradictory enough for a paradox,” remarked Mr.
Clyde.
“It’s a melancholy and literal fact. You know, there’s a height and
weight basis for age upon which our school grading system rests. The
authorities have been obliged to reconstruct it because the children
are continuously growing smaller for their years. _There’s_ work for
the inspection force!”
“You’d put the children on pulleys and stretch ‘em out, I suppose!”
gibed Grandma Sharpless.
“That might work, too,” replied the doctor, unruffled. “The Procrustean
system isn’t so bad, if old Procrustes had only sent his victims to the
gymnasium instead of putting them to bed. Yes, a quarter of an hour
with the weight-pulleys every day would help undersized kiddies a good
deal. But principally I should want the school-inspectors to keep the
youngsters playing.”
“You don’t have to teach a child to play,” sniffed Grandma Sharpless,
with womanly scorn of mere man’s views concerning children.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Sharpless, you taught your children to play.”
“I! Whatever makes you think that?”
“The simple fact that they didn’t die in babyhood.”
Mrs. Sharpless looked at him with a severity not unmingled with
suspicion. “Sometimes, young man,” she observed, “you talk like a—a—a
gump!”
“Take that, Strong!” said Mr. Clyde, joining in the doctor’s laugh
against himself.
“Facts may sometimes sound foolish,” admitted Dr. Strong. “If they do,
that’s the fault of the speaker. And it _is_ a fact that every mother
teaches her baby to play. Watch the cat if you don’t believe me. The
wisest woman in America points out in her recent book that it is the
mother’s playing with her baby which rouses in it the will to live.
Without that will to live none of us would survive.”
“I don’t know who your wisest woman in America may be, but I don’t
believe she knows what she is talking about,” declared Grandma
Sharpless flatly.
“I’ve never known her when she didn’t,” retorted the doctor. “If Jane
Addams of Hull House isn’t an expert in life, mental, moral, and
physical, then there’s no such person! Why, see here, Mrs. Sharpless;
do you know why a baby’s chance of survival is less in the very best
possible institution without its mother, than in the very worst
imaginable tenement with its mother, even though the mother is unable
to nurse it?”
“It isn’t as well tended, I expect.”
“All its physical surroundings are a thousand times more advantageous:
better air, better food, better temperature, better safeguarding
against disease; yet babies in these surroundings just pine away and
die. It’s almost impossible to bring up an infant on an institutional
system. The infant death-rate of these well-meaning places is so
appalling that nobody dares tell it publicly. And it is so, simply
because there is no one to play with the babies. The nurses haven’t the
time, though they have the instinct. I tell you, the most wonderful,
mystic, profound thing in all the world, to me, is the sight of a young
girl’s intuitive yearning to dandle every baby she may see. That’s the
universal world-old, world-wide, deep-rooted genius of motherhood,
which antedates the humankind, stirring within her and impelling her to
help keep the race alive—by playing with the baby.”
“H’m! I hadn’t thought of it in that way,” confessed Grandma Sharpless.
“There may be something in what you say, young man. But by the time
children reach school age I guess they’ve learned that lesson.”
“Not always. At least, not properly, always. Let’s consult the
Committee on School of our household organization.”
He sent for eight-year-old Julia.
“Question to lay before you, Miss Chairwoman,” said Dr. Strong. “How
many of the girls in your grade hang around the hall or doorways during
recess?”
“Oh, lots!” said Julia promptly.
“Are they the bigger girls? or the smaller ones?” The Committee on
School considered the matter gravely. “Mary Hinks, she’s tall, but
she’s awful thin and sickly,” she pronounced. “Dot Griswold and Cora
Smith and Tiny Warley—why, I guess they’re most all the littlest girls
in the class.”
Dr. Strong nodded. “Sure to be the undernourished, anaemic, lethargic
ones,” said he. “They’re forgetting the lessons of their babyhood.
Insensibly they are losing the will to live. But there’s nobody to tell
them so. A thorough medical inspection service would correct that. It
would include school-nurses who would go to the homes of the children
and tell the parents what was the matter. Such a system might not be
warranted to keep epidemics out of our schools, but it would stretch
out and fill out those meager youngsters’ brains as well as bodies, and
fit them to combat illness if it did come. The whole theory of the
school’s attitude toward the child seems to me misconceived by those
who have charge of the system. It assumes too much in authority and
avoids too much in responsibility.
“Take the case of John Smith, who has two children to bring up under
our enlightened system of government. Government says to John Smith,
‘Send your children to school!’ ‘Suppose I don’t wish to?’ says John
Smith. ‘You’ve got to,’ says Government. ‘It isn’t safe for me to have
them left uneducated.’ ‘Will you take care of them while they’re at
school?’ says John Smith. ‘I’ll train their minds,’ says Government.
‘What about their bodies?’ says John Smith. ‘Hm!’ says Government;
‘that’s a horse of another color.’ ‘Then I’ll come with them and see
that they’re looked after physically,’ says John Smith. ‘You _will_
not!’ says Government. ‘I’m _in loco ‘parentis_, while they’re in
school.’ ‘Then you take the entire _loco_ of the _parentis_,’ says John
Smith. ‘If you take my children away on the ground that you’re better
fitted to care for their minds than I am, you ought to be at least as
ready to look after their health. Otherwise,’ says John Smith, ‘go and
teach yourself to stand on your head. You can’t teach _my_ children.’
Now,” concluded Dr. Strong, “do you see any flaws in the Smith point of
view?”
“Just plain common sense,” approved Grandma Sharpless.
“Clyde,” said Dr. Strong, with a twinkle, “if you don’t stop rubbing a
hole in your chin, I’ll have to repair _you_. What’s preying on your
mind?”
“I am trying,” replied Mr. Clyde deliberately, “to figure out, with
reference to the School Superintendent and myself, just how a man who
has made a fool of himself can write a letter to another man who has
helped the first man make a fool of himself, admitting that he’s made a
fool of himself, and yet avoid embarrassment, either to the man who has
made a fool of himself or to the other man who aided the man in making
a fool of himself. Do you get that?”
Dr. Strong rose. “I’m a Chinese doctor,” he observed, “not a Chinese
puzzle-solver. That’s a matter between you and your ink-well. Meantime,
having attained the point for which I’ve been climbing, I now declare
this session adjourned.”
IV.
THE CORNER DRUG-STORE
“No, it won’t add to the attractiveness of the neighborhood, perhaps,”
said Mrs. Clyde thoughtfully. “But how convenient it will be!”
Mr. Clyde had come home with the news that a drug-store was to be
opened shortly on the adjacent corner. Shifting his position to dodge a
foliage-piercing shaft of sunlight—they were all sitting out on the
shady lawn, in the cool of a September afternoon—Dr. Strong shook his
head.
“Too convenient, altogether,” he observed.
“How’s that?” queried Mr. Clyde. “A drugstore is like a gun in Texas:
you may not need it often, but when you do need it, you need it like
blazes.”
“True enough. But most people over-patronize the drug-store.”
“Not this family; at least, since our house-doctor came to keep us well
on the Chinese plan,” said Mrs. Clyde gracefully.
But Dr. Strong only looked rueful. “Your Chinese doctor has to plead
guilty to negligence of what has been going on under his very nose.”
“Oh, not more trouble!” pleaded Mrs. Clyde. She had come through the
dreaded ordeal of little Betty’s operation for adenoids—which had
proved to be, after all, so slight and comparatively painless—with a
greatly augmented respect for and trust in Dr. Strong; but her nerves
still quivered.
“Nothing to trouble you,” the doctor assured her, “but enough to make
me feel guilty—and stupid. Have you noticed any change in Manny,
lately?”
“Manny” was fourteen-year-old Maynard Clyde, the oldest of the
children; a high school lad, tall, lathy, athletic, and good-tempered.
“The boy is as nervous as a witch,” put in Grandma Sharpless. “I’ve
noticed it since early summer.”
“Then I wish you had taught me my trade,” said Dr. Strong. “Manny is so
husky and active that I’ve hardly given him a thought.”
“Well, what’s wrong with him?” asked the father anxiously.
“Too much drug-store,” was the prompt reply. “Not drugs!” cried Mrs.
Clyde, horrified. “That child!”
“Well, no; not in the sense you mean it. Wait; there he is now. Manny!”
he called, raising his voice. “Come over here a minute, will you?” The
boy ambled over, and dropped down on the grass. He was brown, thin, and
hard-trained; but there was a nervous pucker between his eyes, which
his father noted for the first time. “What’s this? A meeting of the
Board? Anything for the Committee on Milk Supply to do?” he asked.
“Not at present,” answered Dr. Strong, “except to answer a question or
two. You don’t drink coffee, do you?”
“Of course not. I’m trying for shortstop on the junior nine, you know.”
“How are you making out?”
“Rotten!” said the boy despondently. “I don’t seem to have any grip on
myself this year. Sort o’ get the rattles.”
“Hm-m-m. Feel pretty thirsty after the practice, and usually stop in at
the soda-fountain for some of those patent soft drinks advertised to be
harmless but stimulating, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said the boy, surprised.
“Ah,” said the doctor carelessly; “three or four glasses a day, I
suppose?”
Manny thought a moment. “All of that,” he said.
“Well, you quit it,” advised the doctor, “if you want to make the ball
team. It will put you off your game worse than tea or coffee. Tell the
athletic instructor I said so, will you?”
“Sure!” said the boy. “I didn’t know there was any harm in it.”