w tag ends were picked out of the
nasopharynx of one child. At 4 P.M. the "party" had returned to the
Children's Aid Society's school and to the ice cream that follows each
adenoid party.

It is worth while to tell mothers stories of the "marvelous improvement
in school progress of those children whose brains have been poisoned
and starved by the accursed adenoid growths, and how their bodies
fairly bloom when the mysterious and awful incubus is removed," to use
the words of one school principal. It is worth while to show them
"before" and "after" pictures, and "before" and "after" children, and
"before" and "after" school marks.

CHAPTER VI

CATCHING DISEASES, COLDS, DISEASED GLANDS

Deadly fevers, the plague, black death, cholera, malaria, smallpox,
taught mankind invaluable lessons. Millions of human beings died before
the mind of man devoted itself to preventing the diseases for which no
sure cure had been found. Efforts to conquer these diseases were tardy
because men were taught that some unseen power was punishing men and
governments for their sins. The difference between the old and the new
way is shown powerfully by a painting in the Liverpool Gallery entitled
"The Plague." A mediaeval village is strewn with the dead and dying.
Bloated, spotted faces look into the eyes of ghouls as laces and
jewelry are torn from bodies not yet cold. In the foreground a muscular
giant, paragon of conscious virtue, clad like John the Baptist and
Bible in hand, finds his way among his plague-stricken fellow-townsmen,
urging them to turn from their sins. Modern efficiency learns of the
first outbreak of the plague, isolates the patient, kills rats and
their fleas which spread the disease, thoroughly cleanses or destroys,
if necessary, all infected clothing, bedding, floors, and walls, and
makes it possible for us to go on living for each other with a better
chance of "bringing forth fruits worthy for repentance."

Where boards of health make it compulsory to report cases of sickness
due to contagion, health records are a reliable index to "catching"
diseases. But now that the chief infection is the kind that afflicts
children, we can read the index before the outbreak that calls in a
physician to diagnose the case. School examination shows which
children have defects that welcome and encourage disease germs. It
points to homes that cultivate germs, and consequently menace other
homes. To locate children who have enla