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THE HEALTH OF THE CITIES

becoming more filthy." In
passing, it must be put
down as a disgrace to a city
like St. Paul that it has in
this enlightened age paid its
health commissioner the
same salary as it pays the col-
lectors of dead animals, while
his assistant receives just a lit-
tle more per day than does the
garbage collector.

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Two years ago a young man was made health-officer of the city of Wheeling, West Virginia. The doctors were very busy just then, and so were the undertakers, because of an unwarranted rate of death among the infants of that city. It was a sort of "race-suicide," but on a mammoth scale. The new health-officer was shocked and dumfounded as he read over the long death roll. The milk supplied by the venders at once fell under his suspicion. Then he looked up the law. Too often health boards and officers are tied hand and foot by a lack of authority, but this Wheeling progressive felt sure from his interpretation of the law that he had the power to put a stop to this heedless sacrifice of infant life. He began by examining samples of milk sold in the city, and then it dawned on him that this course would be useless if he stopped at merely entering the results in his book of record, so he decided to make the facts known to his employer,-the people. When this became known, there were vigorous protests and dire threats of violence from the parties interested financially, but he went ahead in the face of this stormy antagonism, and printed the

Don't Dope Your Baby

OPTUM

Stop Giving Scothing Syrups

A DOSE OF A "SOOTHING" SYRUP IS THE SAME AS
A BLOW ON THE HEAD.

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results of his inspection in the columns of the daily press. The list of guilty venders was a long one, and its very proportions startled the citizens from their costly slumber. But the efforts and results were worth while. Today Wheeling has a uniformly good milk supply, for the people avoided the venders of dirty milk as they would the plague, and the venders whose names appeared among the undesirables in the printed list, were forced to mend their ways or go out of business. Now the little white hearse is seldom seen on the streets of the city of Wheeling. Even adverse advertising pays.

Easton, Pennsylvania, is entitled to a blue ribbon on the score of its method of dealing with tuberculosis among the poor. It is a widely known fact nowadays that besides fresh air, proper and nourishing food is one of the chief essentials in building up the tubercular victim and bringing him back to health. Cream, butter and eggs have a high value in this respect, but where is the poor or povertystricken victim to obtain these? For in a majority of instances these unfortunates are of the poorer classes, and have a difficult enough struggle against the odds of life when in full health. let them once get into the clutches of the white plague, and they will stand little chance of recovery unless supplied with proper nourishment in abundant quantities. Easton realized this, and so far it is the only city in the entire country which has solved this phase of the dark problem of tuberculosis. Easton, with

But

arms laden with generous quantities of cream, butter and eggs, goes right into the homes of the needy tubercular victims, and supplies all tubercular victims with rich, bounteous provisions. It discriminates between charitably saving the starving and re-building into new life the shattered frames of the tubercular. The only requisite necessary to obtain this richest of nourishment is a physician's certificate, stating that the bearer is a victim of the white plague. This plan is better and cheaper than hospitals, of which enough will never be built to supply the demand so far as tuberculosis is concerned, and other cities which wish to rank foremost in health activity would do well to follow Easton's lead.

In this limited distribution of medals to cities for achievement along health lines, Cincinnati must not be forgotten. There are to be no more "blue Mondays" down there on the Ohio,

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and henceforth washday will cease to be the abomination of desolation for the poorer families who are fortunate enough to live in Cincinnati. That city's health board is entitled to the credit for carrying out the idea, for they fully realized the dangerous consequences often due to damp, steaming clothes hanging to dry in the close quarters of the dwellers of the tenements, and had the foresight to see the sanitary benefits of a city public laundry. So the laundry was built, and was just recently opened to the women. of the crowded tenement districts. This novel city plant includes enough driers, washers and electric irons to meet the laundry needs of five hundred families every week. It has proved to be such a success that Cincinnati is getting ready to build more of the same kind.

Performances like this, and of some of the other cities mentioned, benefit a city even in a financial way, for good health

and a low death rate are two of the best advertisements that a city may have. The more enterprising of our cities are learning this, and are waking to the fact that to grow in population and prestige it is not only necessary to attract new citizens, but even more necessary to preserve the health of those they already possess. Just as the insurance companies are realizing that it is more profitable to keep their policy-holders alive and paying premiums than it is to let them die, so some of the cities are having it forced on them that a healthy man, woman or child is a real commercial asset to any community.

But it must be said to the shame of most of our cities that they have not more fully awakened to the possibilities of this health age. There is little excuse. Information and practical knowledge are not lacking; in fact, those who would gladly guard the public's health have more knowledge for that purpose than

THE HEALTH OF THE CITIES

APPROPRIATIONS FOR

CHICAGO'S PUBLIC SAFETY DEPARTMENTS
FOR THE LAST FOUR YEARS

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5,610,845

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$5,859.510

$6629.512

$ 5.904.900

A COMPARISON OF CHICAGO'S APPROPRIATIONS FOR HEALTH. POLICE

AND FIRE.

Note that "Health" receives a smaller allowance each succeeding year.

A SUGGESTION. WHICH IF FOLLOWED. WOULD LOWER
THE DEATH RATE IN THE CITIES

they know what to do with,-oftentimes they cannot even give it away! "What a

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pity it is," said a prominent sanitarian recently, "that some man could not have patented the fresh-air treatment for tuberculosis! He would have been a millionaire many times over, and his treatment would have been, without any doubt, far more popular than Peruna!"

It is to be hoped that the passion for drugging and doctoring the individual will soon be a thing of the past, while the health and well-being of the species as a whole will be given more attention. The problem of disease in relation to cities merely requires the earnest consideration of those gifted with honorable political sagacity; the exponents of medical science are doing their part as best they can. It is now up to the citizen to arouse himself and awaken others to activity, for henceforth it will be to the lasting disgrace of any city if it does not bend every effort to the wholesale eradication of disease by preventive measures accessible to all. Our cities have had the finger of scorn pointed at them often enough; they have it in them to become models for the civilized world-models that may even be regarded with approval by a more enlightened civilization a number of gener

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ations hence.

Wisdom of the Ancients

¶ Love thyself, and many will hate thee.
¶ A prosperous fool is a grievous burden.

The truth is always the strongest argument.

¶ Better be ignorant of a matter than half know it.

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SUN-POWER TO IRRIGATE THE NILE VALLEY

have begun to pour in from every section of the globe until Mr. Shuman has found it necessary to begin the erection of a plant to make sun-power plants. The work on this plant is starting now in Philadelphia.

This, in brief, is the story of the ultimate success of years of effort, of work and of testing, but it gives only a slight idea of the great factor that has entered agricultural and manufacturing development and what this wonderful sun-rayharnessing machinery will do.

The main object of the sun-power plant is to produce practical power at the least possible cost. The idea of "harnessing the sun" has been the dream of inventors and the desire of the commercial giants for years. Some efforts have met. with a certain amount of success but not

with practical success. Toys, almost, have been invented which, were they used for commercial purposes, would prove far too costly to be practicable. It was toward the commercial use of the sun-power plant that Mr. Shuman bent all his efforts.

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produce a plant that would originally cost no more than about twice as much as a steam boiler of the same horse-power. The 10,000 horse-power plant now being shipped to Egypt meets this every requirement.

The plant which has been in operation near Tacony is built low, so low that the winds have never injured it since it has been in operation. It is expected to operate about eight hours a day in the Nile country and in this latitude it has already turned out 3,000 gallons of water a minute, throwing it to a height of 33 feet. In Egypt, it is expected to treble, possibly quadruple, this capacity.

Mr. Shuman commenced his experiments about ten years ago. The first experiments showed that if the sun's rays beat directly upon a glass vessel and if all losses by conduction, convection and radiation were prevented, the temperature within the vessel would rise to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat losses were prevented by a theoretically perfect system of insulation, but this, of course, was impossible for commercial purposes, because of the immense cost. It was found, however, that by the use of wellknown and cheap forms of heat insulation sufficient loss could be prevented to produce practical power at almost no cost.

The production of steam by atmospheric pressure keeps the temperature down to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. If there were no steam produced, the heat would rise to 395 Fahrenheit in latitude 40 north and possibly to 400 degrees Fahrenheit near the equator. Whatever excess steam is produced can be, of course, utilized.

With these matters determined, Mr. Shuman commenced his practical experiments. He built three generators. The

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THE SUN-POWER PLANT IN ACTION,

It is pumping three thousand gallons of water a minute to a height of thirty-three feet. The practicability of the

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