Cases of Tuberculosis Arranged According to the US Census Classification, Reported in Connection with Gainful Occupations :

Additional Water Supply. The city of Akron is about to undertake the enlargement of its water purification plant by providing for an additional capacity of 10,000,000 gallons a day. This will give the plant a total capacity of 30,000,000 gallons, placing it in the same class as the Columbus plant.

Bathing Facilities. The division has been requested to investigate the sanitary aspects of the Scioto River near Camp Sherman for bathing purposes to determine whether it will be safe from a health standpoint for the young men, soon to be encamped there, to take an occasional plunge in the Scioto.

Female.

DIVISION OF LABORATORIES.
July, 1917.

Bacteriological Examinations

Tuberculosis, pos. 99, neg. 277, susp. 3......

Diphtheria, pos. 46, neg. 229, susp. 19, no growth 1..

Typhoid pos. 8, neg. 73, susp. 10..

Malaria, neg. 1.

Rabies, pos. 16, neg. 9, susp. 9.

Water

Sewage

Miscellaneous

Total

379

295

91

1

34

243

2

30

1,075

Public Comfort Stations. During the month conferences were held with the city authorities of Chillicothe relative to the installation of public comfort stations. There are at present practically no accommodations. When Camp Sherman is occupied it will mean. that this city will more than double in population. There will be 10,000 soldiers on the streets all the time besides the thousands of friends and relatives visiting there.

Bellefontaine, O., is another city that has under consideration the installation of public comfort stations in the county building which is located in the heart of the city.

ESCAPING QUARANTINE.

A group of "prominent citizens" had gathered for a social session. Men and women of intelligence were there, and honorable people, all of them, or thought they were. During the evening the subject of quarantine was discussed, and how annoying it is to be quarantined, and all that. Then the little group, or several of the group, began telling how they had avoided quarantine. They related with merriment how each had "fooled the doctors" and escaped from home and gone about their business despite the fact that there was a contagious disease in the house, and they seemed to think it a good joke on the health officers that the card on the front door didn't keep them from using the back door. Not one in the group considered that he or she had done a dishonorable or a dangerous thing.

There was not a person in the group who would shoot a man in the dark. There was not one who would break into a home and rob it. There was not one who would catch a child in an alley and choke it to death, or wilfully destroy a home with dynamite. Yet none of these things is any worse than to leave a home that is quarantined and go about the streets.

Is it any worse for a man to catch a kid in an alley and choke it to death than to inoculate it with the germs of diphtheria and thus cause it to strangle? Would it be any worse to blow up a home with dynamite than to inflict that home with scarlet fever? Should it be a greater crime to pry open a window and rob a residence than to be the cause of typhoid fever entering the home through the hydrant? What is the moral difference between shooting a person in the dark and spreading contagion that kills him?

The health officers are not issuing quarantine cards for fun. They are not demanding that you stay at home when quarantined simply to "get even" with you for something you have done. They know what they are doing, and they are doing it for the good of the thousands. of people of this community. And if you are a law-abiding person you ought to assist the health officers in carrying out their orders rather than scheming to thwart the officers in their work. - Newark, N. J. Health Bulletin.

HEALTH OFFICERS' ROUNDTABLE

Censoring Health News.

In case of an epidemic, or threatened epidemic of small-pox or other disease in a community should newspapers publish the fact that there is such an epidemic or threatened epidemic?

This question came up in a meeting of health officials, manufacturers and other citizens held in a southern Ohio city a few days ago, for the purpose of discussing means of checking a threatened epidemic of small-pox.

The question was put up to the representative of the State Department of Health and the answer given was that publicity given through the newspapers of the prevalence of small-pox or other contagious diseases will not hrut a community provided that same publicity also tells of efforts being made to stamp out the epidemic.

Honest statements of conditions should be given to the newspapers and the newspapers should publish such news. An attempt of officials or newspapers to suppress news of the prevalence of that old monster, small-pox, in the community because it might "drive away trade" or "hurt business" very often has just the opposite effect intended. The people of the community are bound to learn of it and they pass the word out, often exaggerating conditions, and a lie once started, like a snowball, becomes bigger and bigger as it rolls along.

This is best illustrated by a true story of a prominent man in public life who went on a jamboree, had a fight, and finally landed in a hospital. Because of the man's position and high standing in the community, the newspapers did not publish the facts but the town gossips did, by word of mouth, until the rumors of the scandal became so exaggerated that the prominent citizen finally appealed to the newspapers to publish the truth about it.

There was a time, not many years ago, when the "powers that be" in some of the leading cities of Ohio would not permit health officials to placard houses for small-pox for fear of driving away trade but it is gratifying to know that most communities have come out of that benighted state and manufacturers, merchants and other business interests who a few years ago were generally found arrayed against such measures are not found cooperating with health officials in their attempts to control the spread of communicable disease and prevent unnecessary sickness.

Public Health Work in Akron.

Because of the phenomenal growth of the city of Akron, the eyes of the country are focused upon that prosperous rubber city.

It has many problems to solve and the question of public health is one of the first. Dr. J. J. McShane the Health Officer of Akron having resigned, Mayor W. J. Laub is taking charge of the situation and showing a deep interest in the safeguarding of the pubic health. The city has appropriated $65,000 for public health work this year. Plans are being laid for medical inspection in the schools and reorganizing the nursing service. The city is to be divided into 14 districts, each one to have a visiting nurse assigned to it. Seven school physicians will be assigned, each having two districts in his charge. All will be coordinated with city health work and work. under the city health commissioners. Dr. W. E. Cole, city epidemiologist and Miss Olive Beason, supervising public health nurse, are at the head of the medical and nursing service.

The city of Akron presents a wonderful field for public health work. The following editorial from the Akron Beacon Journal indicates that the city is alive to its opportunities in protecting public health:

Shall Akron Go Back?

Dismayed by the startling figures shown in a survey here two years ago Akron turned aside from building bridges and paving streets and from dumping money into the water plant at Kent and concentrated its efforts on health.

The prevalence of contagious diseases, of epidemics that could be avoided by proper care and immediate action, the high loss to households and to industry through loss of time by workers, the high death rate among little children—all these were presented to the city called for action. And action came.

Despite the fact of a chronic shortage of funds, the city took the lid off the strong box and reorganized health work on a big city basis, employing the best men it could secure and perfecting an organization, without much regard to cost, that would it hoped secure results.

Some good results have already been brought about. There was not as much improvement as many expected. Our infant mortality rate is still high, and was higher this year than last. This is particularly due to the fact that an arbitrary population figure, much toɔ low for fairness, was used in determining the death rate. But granting that Akron's population was greater than the figure used, and the death rate consequently lower, the figures are still too large.

We are still losing too many babies.

Let's grant that health is a community proposition as well as an individual one, that housing conditions, which can't immediately be improved, that sanitation, water and other factors play a large part. Akron has so desperately needed houses of any kind, of all kinds, to shelter its growing population that it was manifestly impossible to secure ideal conditions. Establishment of baby clinics and increase of the nursing staff against this increasing problem, is one step that has been taken and one worthy of continuance. It is perhaps the