Is not the wiser plan one of education and regulation, rather than of repression? The whole sorry history of prohibition proves this to be true. Much constructive work must be done before an ideal condition with respect to the drinking habits of the people is achieved, and thoughtful men are agreed that the groundwork of the structure must be a more equitable social and economic system. It is fruitless to talk prohibition to the man who is overworked and under-nourished, who is badly housed, and who knows all too little of the joys of life. Coincident with this basic work there must be sensible laws regulating the liquor traffic, accompanied by systematic education of the individual to thoughts and habits of true temperance. By these methods, and not by prohibition, shall we settle the so-called liquor question. A WORD WITH THE PUBLICITY AGENT (Reprinted from The Survey, October 16, 1915.) There was a paper given before the American Public Health Association this year, addressed to health officials which should really have been directed to magazine writers and to the editors of newspapers that maintain a "health column" or a "how to keep well" department. Dr. C. V. Chapin of Providence is one of the country's foremost sanitarians. He believes in publicity for health matters as well as for other matters in which a community is vitally interested, but he does not believe in some methods of the publicity man. He is revolutionary enough to insist that if truth and readableness cannot go hand in hand, then the latter should be sacrificed. "It would appear to be almost an axiom that the teacher should teach the truth. Yet there are many to whom this does not seem to have occurred. If the tares of error are sown among the wheat they are sure to spring up and many a summer sun will come and go before they wither and die. . . . In the past many errors have been taught by alleged sanitarians and enthusiastic reformers of many kinds. Some of them are still entrenched in the minds of the public to plague us and hinder progress." ... Such are the fallacies as to the dangers of cellar air and "ground air"; the perniciousness of emanations from cemeteries, and the disease-producing properties of simple dirt. A belief that dirt as dirt is dangerous hampers the health officer who wants to insist on the danger of certain kinds of dirt in certain places-human excreta in drinking-water, for instance. At the close of the Spanish War, Colonel Waring was sent to clean the city of Havana and so exterminate yellow fever. He did clean it but the fever was worse than ever. Yet this old heresy about the all-importance of dirt, any kind of dirt, still persists. If writers for the weekly or monthly health bulletin cannot think of anything else they can always fall back on a new sermon on dirt. One picture bulletin issued by a health department shows adjoining yards, one shiftless and dirty, the other lovely with flowers, with the motto, "Dirt and disease go hand in hand." Of course, when everyday experience shows that the dirty little urchins in homes of this kind are in the most blooming health and that a sickly family may keep the premises absolutely clean and still be sick, the community is not likely to trust this same authority when he tells them that antitoxin cures diphtheria. Another subject on which exaggerated nonsense has been written, and has deeply impressed the public mind is the danger of germs of infectious disease. "For instance," quotes Dr. Chapin, "these germs by their exceeding lightness may separate from any of the emanations of the body to infect some other person weeks or months afterward, and scores of miles away. There is little wonder that, when a few years ago we sought to establish a hospital for contagious disease, the neighbors rose as one man to protest against the outrage." Food adulteration is a good instance of the harm done by placing emphasis on an unimportant feature to the detriment of vitally important ones. It is invariably a most popular subject and is handled with infinite zeal by the "health editor." Dr. Chapin describes a cartoon showing Death pouring adulterants into soups. and sardines, while a lovely Red Cross nurse labeled Health, is dealing out cans marked P-U-R-E. "The truth is that adulteration, except in a few instances, is an economic, not a health, problem." Cleanliness in food is much more important; but when the health writers turn to that subject, they usually devote all their eloquence to the prevention of dust and quite forget the infinitely greater danger that comes from dirty hands. Perhaps the most lurid nonsense of all is written about the fly. Dr. Chapin is willing to admit that the house-fly does at times and |