|
| =GO TO A HOSPITAL WHILE YOU CAN AND BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. |
| There you can get the best treatment, all the rest, all |
| the fresh air, and all the food which you need.= |
| |
| =THE CAREFUL AND CLEAN CONSUMPTIVE IS NOT DANGEROUS TO THOSE |
| WITH WHOM HE LIVES AND WORKS= |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Is it not significant that America's national movement is due primarily
to the organizing capacity of laymen in the New York Charity
Organization Society rather than to schools or hospitals? Most of the
local secretaries are men whose inspiration came from contact with the
non-medical relief of the poor in city tenements. The secretary of the
national association is a university professor of anthropology, who has
also a medical degree. The child victim's plea--Little Jo's Smile--was
nationalized by an association of laymen, aided by the advertising
managers of forty magazines. The smaller cities of New York state are
being aroused by a state voluntary association that for years has
visited almshouses, insane asylums, and hospitals. These facts I
emphasize, for they illustrate the opportunity and the duty of the lay
educator, whether parent, teacher, labor leader, or trustee of
hospital, orphanage, or relief society.

Three fundamental rules of action should be established as firmly as
religious principles:

1. The public health authorities should be told of every known and
every suspected case of tuberculosis.

2. For each case proved by examination of sputum to be
tuberculous, the public-health officers should know that the germs
are destroyed before being allowed to contaminate air or food.

3. Sick and not yet sick should practice habits of health that
build up vitality to resist the tubercle bacilli and that abhor
uncleanliness as nature abhors a vacuum.

[Illustration: FIGHTING TUBERCULOSIS WITH A NATIONAL
ORGANIZATION]

All laws, customs, and environmental conditions opposed to the
enforcement of these three principles must be modified or abolished. If
the teachers of America will list for educational use in their own
communities the local obstacles to these rules of action, they will see
exactly where their local problem lies. The illustrations