these causes might be
prevented.

Every Fourth of July a great many entirely preventable deaths and minor
accidents occur. The toy pistol has come to be considered almost as
deadly as the larger variety. The tiny "caps" that are used in them are
fired back into the hand of the person shooting them, tiny particles of
powder enter the skin, burrowing into the flesh, and the skin closes
over them, shutting out the air. If these particles carry with them
tetanus germs, as is often the case, because these germs are found
chiefly in the dirt of the street where most of this shooting is done,
lock-jaw or tetanus, a severe form of blood-poisoning, results, and is
usually fatal. The same results come less frequently from fire-crackers
and other explosives, and in addition many accidents which injure hands,
eyes, and other parts of the body, are the result of the use of the
heavier explosives.

The Pasteur Treatment is saving many lives each year by treating cases
of infection from "mad dogs" and other animals affected with
hydrophobia.

Among the diseases which can be remedied by slight means are enlarged
tonsils and adenoid growths back of the nose, both of which can be
removed by a slight and almost painless operation, but which, if allowed
to develop, often cause serious throat and lung troubles, deafness, and
weakened minds. Slight defects of the eyes can be remedied by the
wearing of glasses, but which if unchecked give rise to various nerve
and spinal diseases as well as more serious eye troubles. It is believed
now that most of the blindness of later life could be prevented by
proper care of the eyes in early life and by prompt attention to slight
defects of the eyes when they begin.

Doctor Walter Cornell, who has made a study of eye strain says, "Eye
strain is the chief cause of functional diseases. It is almost the sole
cause of headache, is the frequent cause of digestive diseases, of
spinal curvatures, and indirectly of neurasthenia and hysteria."

Decayed teeth in children, slight in themselves, give rise to more
serious troubles in later life,--ill-shaped mouths and jaws and crooked
teeth result from teeth that have been drawn too early in life. Decayed
teeth lead also to many stomach and digestive troubles.

Medical inspection in the schools shows a surprising number of children
suffering from these minor troubles. About 80,000 children were
examined, and the records show that out of every one hundred chil