THE GULICK HYGIENE SERIES BY LUTHER HALSEY GULICK, M.D. DIRECTOR OF PHYSICAL TRAINING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NEW YORK Educ T 399.06.476 HARVARD COLLENE LIBRARY GIFT OF GEORGE ARTHUR PLIMPTON ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY LUTHER H. GULICK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 66.12 The Athenæum Press INTRODUCTION While the laws of personal hygiene are recognized on every side and even taught to children, the wider laws of community hygiene have not, in the past, been included in the curriculum of our public schools. This might seem strange save for the fact that the entire subject of public health is modern. Indeed, with the power of the microbe unsuspected until 1865, with tubercle bacilli and the laws which control them undiscovered until 1882, with universal ignorance of the cure of diphtheria until 1892, and of malaria and yellow fever until 1901, it is not surprising that scientific facts about these preventable diseases have not as yet, to any appreciable extent, been adapted to the understanding of young children. At last, however, between the progress of scientific research on the one hand and of unprecedented acquaintance with city conditions on the other, instruction in the importance of the laws of civic hygiene has become not only possible but imperative. Scientists have learned not merely the causes of a high death rate but the way to avoid them. Moreover, the modern methods of research are of such profound |