Professor Fisher, of the Committee of One Hundred appointed to consider
the problem of the national health, was laboring with Senator Works of
California, the official representative in Washington of the Christian
Scientists.
“Your approval, Senator,” he said, “of such measures as clean streets
and playgrounds is really an indorsement of preventive medicine.”
“But,” exclaimed Senator Works, “I did not know you meant those things
as being preventive medicine. I thought preventive medicine meant
serums.”
“No,” said Professor Fisher, laughing; “it means mosquito-bars and
bath-tubs.”
It is not only serums and bacteriology, but mosquito-bars and
bath-tubs, clean streets and plenty of sewers, together with an
efficient organization to perfect the operation of such things, that
have revolutionized the conditions of health in New York City.
Consider what has been done for poor children alone. Recently I stood
in one of the fifty-five diet-kitchens maintained by the city. A poor
woman of the neighborhood entered, carrying in her arms a sickly baby.
Evidently familiar with the proper course of procedure, she said to
the nurse in charge, “I have given him castor-oil and barley gruel;
now what shall I do?” This incident is remarkable because the woman
never before had come within the reach of the Health Department. In
the danger that menaced the child, she had learned to take the first
essential steps not through experience or instruction, but merely
through neighborhood gossip.