Civics and Health pot

PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS CHAPTER PAGE PART II. READING THE INDEX TO HEALTH RIGHTS PART III. COÖPERATION IN MEETING HEALTH OBLIGATIONS PART IV. OFFICIAL MACHINERY FOR ENFORCING HEALTH RIGHTS PART V. ALLIANCE OF HYGIENE, PATRIOTISM, AND RELIGION PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV PART II. READING THE INDEX TO HEALTH RIGHTS CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV Part IV, assumes that state and county PART III. COÖPERATION IN MEETING HEALTH OBLIGATIONS CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX 1 CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI PART IV. OFFICIAL MACHINERY FOR ENFORCING HEALTH RIGHTS CHAPTER XXVII Chapter XIV. CHAPTER XXVIII CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX CHAPTER XXXI PART V. ALLIANCE OF HYGIENE, PATRIOTISM, AND RELIGION CHAPTER XXXII CHAPTER XXXIII CHAPTER XXXIV CHAPTER XXXV CHAPTER XXXVI CHAPTER XXXVII CHAPTER XXXVIII CHAPTER XXXIX CHAPTER XL CHAPTER XLI Civics and Health, by William H. Allen The Project Gutenberg EBook of Civics and Health, by William H. Allen This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Civics and Health Author: William H. Allen Contributor: William T. Sedgwick Release Date: May 8, 2007 [EBook #21353] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CIVICS AND HEALTH *** Produced by Jeannie Howse, Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net * * * * * Civics and Health, by William H. Allen 2 + + | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Some text in this document has been moved to avoid | | multi-page tables being inserted mid-paragraph. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this | | document. | | | + + * * * * * [Illustration: LOUIS AGASSIZ "A natural law is as sacred as a moral principle"] CIVICS AND HEALTH BY WILLIAM H. ALLEN SECRETARY, BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH FORMER SECRETARY OF THE NEW YORK COMMITTEE ON PHYSICAL WELFARE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN, AUTHOR OF "EFFICIENT DEMOCRACY" AND "RURAL SANITARY ADMINISTRATION IN PENNSYLVANIA," JOINT AUTHOR OF "SCHOOL REPORTS AND SCHOOL EFFICIENCY" WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GINN AND COMPANY BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · LONDON ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL COPYRIGHT, 1909 BY WILLIAM H. ALLEN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 910.4 The Athenæum Press GINN AND COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U.S.A. INTRODUCTION It is a common weakness of mankind to be caught by an idea and captivated by a phrase. To rest therewith content and to neglect the carrying of the idea into practice is a weakness still more common. It is this frequent failure of reformers to reduce their theories to practice, their tendency to dwell in the cloudland of the ideal rather than to test it in action, that has often made them distrusted and unpopular. With our forefathers the phrase mens sana in corpore sano was a high favorite. It was constantly quoted with approval by writers on hygiene and sanitation, and used as the text or the finale of hundreds of popular Civics and Health, by William H. Allen 3 lectures. And yet we shall seek in vain for any evidence of its practical usefulness. Its words are good and true, but passive and actionless, not of that dynamic type where words are "words indeed, but words that draw armed men behind them." Our age is of another temper. It yearns for reality. It no longer rests satisfied with mere ideas, or words, or phrases. The modern Ulysses would drink life to the dregs. The present age is dissatisfied with the vague assurance that the Lord will provide, and, rightly or wrongly, is beginning to expect the state to provide. And while this desire for reality has its drawbacks, it has also its advantages. Our age doubts absolutely the virtues of blind submission and resignation, and cries out instead for prevention and amelioration. Disease is no longer regarded, as Cruden regarded it, as the penalty and the consequence of sin. Nature herself is now perceived to be capable of imperfect work. Time was when the human eye was referred to as a perfect apparatus, but the number of young children wearing spectacles renders that idea untenable to-day. Meanwhile the multiplication of state asylums and municipal hospitals, and special schools for deaf or blind children and for cripples, speaks eloquently and irresistibly of an intimate connection between civics and health. There is a physical basis of citizenship, as there is a physical basis of life and of health; and any one who will take the trouble to read even the Table of Contents of this book will see that for Dr. Allen prevention is a text and the making of sound citizens a sermon. Given the sound body, we have nowadays small fear for the sound mind. The rigid physiological dualism implied in the phrase mens sana in corpore sano is no longer allowed. To-day the sound body generally includes the sound mind, and vice versa. If mental dullness be due to imperfect ears, the remedy lies in medical treatment of those organs, not in education of the brain. If lack of initiative or energy proceeds from defective aëration of the blood due to adenoids blocking the air tides in the windpipe, then the remedy lies not in better teaching but in a simple surgical operation. Shakespeare, in his wildwood play, saw sermons in stones and books in the running brooks. We moderns find a drama in the fateful lives of ordinary mortals, sermons in their physical salvation from some of the ills that flesh is heir to, and books like this of Dr. Allen's in striving to teach mankind how to become happier, and healthier, and more useful members of society. Dr. Allen is undoubtedly a reformer, but of the modern, not the ancient, type. He is a prophet crying in our present wilderness; but he is more than a prophet, for he is always intensely practical, insisting, as he does, on getting things done, and done soon, and done right. No one can read this volume, or even its chapter-headings, without surprise and rejoicing: surprise, that the physical basis of effective citizenship has hitherto been so utterly neglected in America; rejoicing, that so much in the way of the prevention of incapacity and unhappiness can be so easily done, and is actually beginning to be done. The gratitude of every lover of his country and his kind is due to the author for his interesting and vivid presentation of the outlines of a subject fundamental to the health, the happiness, and the well-being of the people, and hence of the first importance to every American community, every American citizen. WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CONTENTS Civics and Health, by William H. Allen 4 PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS 5 CHAPTER PAGE I. HEALTH A CIVIC OBLIGATION 3 II. SEVEN HEALTH MOTIVES AND SEVEN CATCHWORDS 11 III. WHAT HEALTH RIGHTS ARE NOT ENFORCED IN YOUR COMMUNITY? 23 IV. THE BEST INDEX TO COMMUNITY HEALTH IS THE PHYSICAL WELFARE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN 33 PART II. READING THE INDEX TO HEALTH RIGHTS V. MOUTH BREATHING 45 VI. CATCHING DISEASES, COLDS, DISEASED GLANDS 57 VII. EYE STRAIN 72 VIII. EAR TROUBLE, MALNUTRITION, DEFORMITIES 83 IX. DENTAL SANITATION 89 X. ABNORMALLY BRIGHT CHILDREN 104 XI. NERVOUSNESS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL 107 XII. HEALTH VALUE OF "UNBOSSED" PLAY AND PHYSICAL TRAINING 115 XIII. VITALITY TESTS AND VITAL STATISTICS 124 XIV. IS YOUR SCHOOL MANUFACTURING PHYSICAL DEFECTS? 139 XV. THE TEACHER'S HEALTH 152 PART III. COÖPERATION IN MEETING HEALTH OBLIGATIONS XVI. EUROPEAN REMEDIES: DOING THINGS AT SCHOOL 159 XVII. AMERICAN REMEDIES: GETTING THINGS DONE 166 XVIII. COÖPERATION WITH DISPENSARIES AND CHILD-SAVING AGENCIES 174 XIX. SCHOOL SURGERY AND RELIEF OBJECTIONABLE, IF AVOIDABLE 184 XX. PHYSICAL EXAMINATION FOR WORKING PAPERS 190 CHAPTER PAGE 6 XXI. PERIODICAL PHYSICAL EXAMINATION AFTER SCHOOL AGE 201 XXII. HABITS OF HEALTH PROMOTE INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY 208 XXIII. INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE 218 XXIV. THE LAST DAYS OF TUBERCULOSIS 229 XXV. THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN MILK 252 XXVI. PREVENTIVE "HUMANIZED" MEDICINE: PHYSICIAN AND TEACHER 268 PART IV. OFFICIAL MACHINERY FOR ENFORCING HEALTH RIGHTS XXVII. DEPARTMENTS OF SCHOOL HYGIENE 283 XXVIII. PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF SCHOOL HYGIENE IN NEW YORK CITY 296 XXIX. OFFICIAL MACHINERY FOR ENFORCING HEALTH RIGHTS 302 XXX. SCHOOL AND HEALTH REPORTS 310 XXXI. THE PRESS 322 PART V. ALLIANCE OF HYGIENE, PATRIOTISM, AND RELIGION XXXII. DO-NOTHING AILMENTS 329 XXXIII. HEREDITY BUGABOOS AND HEREDITY TRUTHS 335 XXXIV. INEFFECTIVE AND EFFECTIVE WAYS OF COMBATING ALCOHOLISM 343 XXXV. IS IT PRACTICABLE IN PRESENTING TO CHILDREN THE EVILS OF ALCOHOLISM TO TELL THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH? 357 XXXVI. FIGHTING TOBACCO EVILS 363 XXXVII. THE PATENT-MEDICINE EVIL 369 XXXVIII. HEALTH ADVERTISEMENTS THAT PROMOTE HEALTH 378 XXXIX. IS CLASS INSTRUCTION IN SEX HYGIENE PRACTICABLE? 384 XL. THE ELEMENT OF TRUTH IN QUACKERY; HYGIENE OF THE MIND 391 XLI. "A NATURAL LAW IS AS SACRED AS A MORAL PRINCIPLE" 398 PART III. COÖPERATION IN MEETING HEALTHOBLIGATIONS 7 INDEX 405 CIVICS AND HEALTH PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS PART V. ALLIANCE OF HYGIENE, PATRIOTISM, ANDRELIGION 8 CHAPTER I HEALTH A CIVIC OBLIGATION In forty-five states and territories the teaching of hygiene with special reference to alcohol and tobacco is made compulsory. To hygiene alone, of the score of subjects found in our modern grammar-school curriculum, is given statutory right of way for so many minutes per week, so many pages per text-book, or so many pages per chapter. For the neglect of no other study may teachers be removed from office and fined. Yet school garrets and closets are full of hygiene text-books unopened or little used, while of all subjects taught by five hundred thousand American teachers and studied by twenty million American pupils the least interesting to both teacher and pupil is that forced upon both by state legislation. To complete the paradox, this least interesting subject happens also to be the most vital to the child, to the home, to industry, to social welfare, and to education itself. Whether the subject of hygiene is necessarily dull, whether the statutes requiring regular instruction in the laws of health are violated with impunity, whether health principles are flaunted by health practice at school, these are questions of immediate concern to parents as a class, to employers as a class, to every pastor, every civic leader, every health officer, every taxpayer. Interviews with teachers and principals regarding the present apathy to formal hygiene instruction have brought out the following points that merit the serious consideration of those who are struggling for higher health standards. 1. There is many a slip 'twixt the making of a law and its enforcement. If laws regarding hygiene instruction are not enforced, we should not be surprised. It has been nobody's business to see whether and how hygiene is being taught. The moral crusade spent itself in forcing compulsory laws upon the statute books of every state and territory. Making a fetish of Legislation, the advocates of anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco instruction failed to see the truth that experienced political reformers are but slowly coming to see Legislation which does not provide machinery for its own enforcement is apt to do little good and frequently will do much harm. Machinery, however admirably adapted to the work to be done, will get out of order and become useless, or even harmful, unless constantly watched and efficiently directed. Of what possible use is it to say that state money may be withheld from any school board which fails to enforce the law regarding instruction in hygiene, if state officials never enforce the penalty? So long as the penalty is not enforced for flagrant violation, what difference does it make whether the reason is indifference, ignorance, or desire to thwart the law? Fortunately, it is easy for each one of us to learn how often and in what way the children in our community are being taught hygiene, and how the schools of our state teach and practice the laws of health. If either the spirit or the letter of the law regarding instruction in hygiene is being violated, we can measure the penalty paid in health and morals by our children and our community. We can learn whether law, text-book, curriculum, or teacher should be changed. We can insist upon discussion of the facts and upon remedies suggested by the facts. 2. Teachers give as one reason for neglecting hygiene, that they are often compelled to struggle with a curriculum which requires more than they are able to teach and more than pupils are able to learn in the time allowed. While an overcharged curriculum may explain, it surely does not justify, the violation of law and the dropping of hygiene from our school curriculum. If there is any class of citizen who should teach and practice respect for law as law, it is the teacher. Parents, school directors, county and state superintendents, university presidents, social workers, owe it not only to themselves, but to the American school-teacher, either to repeal the laws that enjoin instruction in hygiene or else so to adjust the curriculum that teachers can comply with those laws. The present situation that discredits both law and hygiene is most demoralizing to teacher, pupil, and community. Many of us might admire the man teacher who frankly says he never explains the evils of cigarettes because he himself is an inveterate smoker of cigarettes. But what must we think of the school system that shifts to such a man the right and the responsibility of deciding whether or not to explain to CHAPTER I 9 underfed and overstimulated children of the slums the truth regarding cigarettes? If practice and precept must be consistent, shall the man be removed, shall he change his habits, shall the law regarding instruction in hygiene be changed, or shall other provision be made for bringing child and essential facts together in a way that will not dull the child's receptivity? 3. Teachers are made to feel that while arithmetic and reading are essential, hygiene is not essential. Whatever may be the facts regarding the relative value of arithmetic and hygiene, whether or not our state legislators have made a mistake in declaring hygiene to be essential, are questions altogether too important for child and state to be left to the discretion of the individual teacher or superintendent. It is fair to the teachers who say they cannot afford to turn aside from the three R's to teach hygiene, to admit that they have not hitherto identified the teaching of hygiene with the promotion of the physical welfare of children. Teachers awake to the opportunity will sacrifice not only hygiene but any other subject for the sake of promoting children's health. They do not really believe that arithmetic is more important than health. What they mean to say is that hygiene, as taught by them, has not heretofore had an appreciable effect upon their pupils' health; that other agencies exist, outside of the school, to teach the child how to avoid certain diseases and how to observe the fundamental laws of health, whereas no other agencies exist to give the child the essentials of arithmetic, reading, and geography. "We teach (or try to teach) what our classes are examined in. If you want a subject taught, you must test a class in it and hold a teacher responsible for results, and examinations are mercilessly unhygienic, you know." 4. Teachers believe that they get better results for their children from teaching hygiene informally and indirectly than from stated formal lessons. Whether instruction should be informal or formal is merely a question of method to be determined by results. What the results are, can be determined by principals, superintendents, and students of education. It is easy to understand how at the time of a fever epidemic children could be taught as much in one week about infection, disease germs, antiseptics, value of cleanliness, etc., as in five or ten months when vivid illustration is lacking. Physicians themselves learn more from one epidemic of smallpox than from four years of book study. To make possible and to require a daily shower bath will undoubtedly do more to inculcate habits of health than repeated lessons about the skin, pores, evaporation, and discharge of impurities. If one illustration is better than ten lessons, if an open window is worth more than all that text-books have to say about ventilation, if a seat adjusted to the child is better than an anatomical chart, this does not mean that instruction in hygiene should cease. On the contrary, it means that provision should be made for every teacher to open windows, to adjust desks, to use the experience of individual children for the education of the class. If the rank and file of teachers have not hitherto been sufficiently observant of physiological and hygienic facts, if they are unprepared from their own lives to detect or to furnish illustrations for the child, this again does not mean that the child should be denied the illustrations, but that the teacher should either have instruction and experience to incite interest and to stimulate powers of observation, or else be asked to give place to another teacher who is able to furnish such qualifications. 5. Children, like adults, can be interested in other people, in rules of conduct, in social conditions, in living and working relations more easily than in their own bodies. The normal, healthy child thinks very little of himself apart from the other boys and girls, the games, the studies, the animals, the nature wonders, the hardships that come to him from the outside. So true is this that one of the best means of mitigating or curing many ailments is to divert the child's attention from himself to things outside of himself that he can look at, hear, enjoy. The power to concentrate attention upon oneself is a sign either of a diseased body, a diseased mind, or a highly trained mind. To study others and to recognize the similarity between others and oneself is as natural as the body itself. Teachers are consulting this line of easiest access to children's attention when they honor children according to cleanliness of hands, of teeth, of shoes. Human interest attaches to what parks or excursions are doing for sickly children, how welfare work is improving factory employees, how smallpox is conquered by vaccination, how insurance companies refuse to take risks upon the lives of men or women addicted to the excessive use of alcohol or tobacco. CHAPTER I 10 [...]... and working conditions where the people I live with and want to please, those who influence me and are influenced by me, make healthy living easy and natural?" 7 Because the problems of health have to do principally with environment, home, street, school, business, it is worth while trying to relate hygiene instruction to industry and government, to preach health from the standpoint of industrial and. .. enumerate a number of health rights and will show through what means we can work together to guarantee that we shall not injure the health of our neighbor and that our neighbor shall not injure our health The truest index to economic status and to standards of living is health environment The best criterion of opportunity for industrial and political efficiency is the conditions affecting health The seven... health rights enforced and health rights unenforced than either sanitary code or sanitary squad Not until we turn our attention from definition and official to things done and dangers remaining can we learn the health progress and health needs of any city or state The health code of one city looks very much like the health code of every other city This is natural because those who write health codes generally... 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 33 CHAPTER VI CATCHING DISEASES, COLDS, DISEASED GLANDS Deadly fevers,... usually | |return, examine |very mild and without sign | |head for |of fever Rash appears on | |overlooked spots |second day as small pimples,| |All spots should |which in about a day become | |have disappeared |filled with clear fluid | Breath and |before child |This fluid then becomes | crust of |returns A mild |matter, and then the spot | spots |disease and |dries upand the crust falls | |seldom any... between the clean and the unclean, CHAPTER II 16 the infected and the uninfected, the orderly and the disorderly, high and low vitality As soon as one district becomes definitely known as a source of nuisance, infection, and disease, better situated districts begin to make laws to protect themselves A great part of our existing health codes and a very large part of the funds spent on health administration... our municipal, state, and national politics we have made the same mistake of concentrating our attention upon the morals and pretensions of candidates and officials instead of judging government by what government does Gains of men and progress of law are useful to mankind only when converted into deeds that make men freer in the enjoyment of health and earning power In protecting health, as in reforming... want to do what teachers and parents wish Physical examinations show now, and might just as well have shown fifty years ago, that the great majority of truants and juvenile offenders have adenoids and enlarged tonsils A recent examination made by the New York board of health on 150 children in one school made up from the truant school, the juvenile court, and Randall's Island, showed that only three... veritable El Dorado of health and nature beauty Groves and dunes and flora vie with the blues of ocean and sky in resting the eye and in filling the soul with that harmony which is said to make for sound living Yet to a child, Fred's schoolmates are experts on patent medicines and on the heredity that is alleged to be responsible for bad temper, running sores, tuberculosis, anæmia, and weak eyes Freddie... legislation to improve the almshouse, school, and working and living conditions When health reports, newspapers, and charitable societies make us see that the slum menaces our health and our happiness, we become interested in the slum for its own sake We then start children's aid societies, consumer's leagues, sanitary and prison associations, child-labor committees, and "efficient government" clubs Rights . TECHNOLOGY CONTENTS Civics and Health, by William H. Allen 4 PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS 5 CHAPTER PAGE I. HEALTH A CIVIC OBLIGATION 3 II. SEVEN HEALTH. MEETING HEALTHOBLIGATIONS 7 INDEX 405 CIVICS AND HEALTH PART I. HEALTH RIGHTS PART V. ALLIANCE OF HYGIENE, PATRIOTISM, ANDRELIGION 8 CHAPTER I HEALTH A