three years last past, conditions in France have combined with devilish fatality to make the land a vast culture-ground of the tuberculosis germ." To be sure, conditions brought about by the war in France are probably worse than they are likely to be in America. France has been in the hands of the invader, her people have been turned out of their homes and many have been carried off to Germany to work amid unhealthful conditions. Nevertheless there is a warning for America in this desolate picture which Mr. White paints. We must prepare to meet a stronger attack than the White Plague has ever before made upon us. Our men will be coming back from the trenches or from Teuton prison camps bringing with them the dreaded germs. Unless we are ready to meet the situation, the infection will gain such a foothold before we can begin to fight effectively that the work of years in suppressing it will be wiped out. All this statement is to the point now. For as this issue of the PUBLIC HEALTH JOURNAL comes off the press the annual Red Cross sale of Christmas seals is getting under way. The goal in this campaign for anti-tuberculosis funds has been set this year at an amount three times as large as last year. In Ohio 10,000,000 seals are to be sold. The Christmas seal sale this year is as truly a matter of military necessary as was the sale of Liberty Bonds or the raising of the huge Red Cross fund. The Red Cross seal on an envelope is the service flag of this phase of the war. Protecting Children Far-reaching in scope and in probable effects, From War's Ravages a campaign for the conservation of child resources is on in the state, led by Dr. Frances M. Hollingshead, director of child hygiene in the State Health Department, working with the Council of National Defense. War conditions in other countries have brought clearly into view the need for this sort of work. America, profiting by the experience of her allies in this respect as she has in others, can, if she prepares in time, avert the ill consequences of child deterioration. If she fails to prepare, the changed industrial conditions and mode of living which the progress of the war will entail will leave upon the coming generation a scar that will last for many years. In the movement which Dr. Hollingshead is leading, there is no intention to scare the people with talk that a crisis is at hand. What is wanted is to awaken the people to a clear realization that a crisis is bound to come, unless steps are taken now to avert it. The entrance of women - married women whose chief function is that of motherhood and home-making into the field of industrial work must bring serious consequences to their children—present and future unless they are protected by the strictest of regulations and the most watchful care. The child labor problem also becomes even more pressing than before. Health work in the public school becomes doubly important, with new outside menaces to child health. Dr. Hollingshead is putting the problem thus presented squarely up to the women of the state. To deal with such a question, she has pointed out, is woman's special province, and the work offers to the women of Ohio a wider opportunity for co-operation and comradeship than any which ever existed before. To be sure, beginnings in dealing with this important wartime problem have already been made in many localities. Machinery already existent has in many cases been able to assume this additional burden. But in the many places where the problem is still an untouched one, the need for the services of women is a crying one. Woman's health must be safeguarded, expectant mothers and future children must be well cared for, children of the present must not through carelessness be permitted to suffer injury. The work is peculiarly woman's own, and her assumption of it is a long step in the way toward victory and peace. The Stars in the * * * In England, Canada, Washington and two army camps in the United States, the four men and one woman contributed by the State Health Department are helping care for the men who are in training for the final death grapple with the Boche. Miss Amy L. Mercer, who resigned to enter the service as a nurse, is stationed at a Canadian military hospital. Dr. John R. McDowell, director of the division of public health education and tuberculosis, is wearing a major's oak leaves at Camp Sherman, Chillicothe. He is in charge of ambulances at the camp. First Lieutenant F. G. Boudreau, M. D., director and epidemiologist in the division of communicable diseases, is one of Uncle Sam's contributions to John Bull. He is in charge of the pathological laboratory in the hospital at Delhi Barracks, Tidworth, Salisbury Plains, England. John S. McCune, chemist in the division of laboratories, has just received a second lieutenant's commission at Fort Benjamin Harrison. Leo F. Ey, laboratory assistant in the same division, is on leave of absence, serving with the United States Public Health Service as director of the bacteriological laboratory in the cantonment at Waco, Texas. To shoulder the duties of the absent members makes the work of every one in the department just a little heavier, but none resents the extra load. With the realization that Uncle Sam needs them more urgently just now than does the department, the entire staff is falling to with a will and striving to overcome the handicap caused by the absence of these important co-workers. The Careless * "There's nothing so sure as death and taxes," we have been told for years. But Ohio has learned that taxes can be checked, if checking them seems desirable, by a one-per-cent law. And in these modern times people have found that, while death can't be abolished, it can, by the exercise of right living, in many cases be postponed. A recent publication of the North Carolina state board of health remarks that many old people are proving that the possibility of adding 15 years to your life is more than a supposition. "They have put aside," says the North Carolina bulletin, "the idea that at 40 you are old and at 60 you are ready for the grave. They have learned that by adopting proper living habits and obeying faithfully the laws of hygiene you may add not only 15, 20 or 40 years to your life, but that you may so preserve the organs of the body and mind as to make this period of life one of the most useful.” The 1910 census showed that there were 4,500,000 persons over 65 in the country. Of these 11,000 were 95 or over and 3,555 were centenarians. It is declared that there are more old people in the world today than ever before. According to the census averages an American 65 years old may expect to live 11.6 years more, one 75 for 9.1 years, one 80 for 5.2 years and one over 90 3 years. And there is a warning for men against careless living in the fact that there are more old women than old men. Safeguarding Our Soldiers From THE GOVERNMENT PLAN AND HOW YOU CAN HELP (Reprinted from pamphlet of Council of National Defense, Subcommittee for Civilian Co-operation in Combating Venereal Diseases.) The Government Program IN this, the Great War, the Gov ernment owes a large duty to every man whose services it has accepted. One of the ways to repay this debt is to return the man to his family healthy. The authorities have taken weeks to select the physically perfect, they have chosen the best men at their disposal, and they must return these patriots to their homes in as nearly a perfect physical condition as is humanly possible. Our Medical Corps is second to none. The records made in combating yellow fever in the Spanish War, in the sanitation of the Panama Canal Zone, in typhoid prevention at the Mexican Border stand unequalled. war There is one phase of which has always been a stumbling block and is one the present administration will attempt to conquer with every means at its disposal. It is one of the hardest problems our Allies have had to face. All previous war experience has shown an enormous increase in venereal diseases along with the concentration of large numbers of men. There is the added danger that when peace comes a grave dissemination of these diseases is probable. There is no time to be lost and the Government, keenly alive to the danger and the responsibility placed upon it, has adopted three methods to combat this fear ful scourge. The entire plan, in the last analysis, depends on the amount of support every interested man and woman offers the Government. 1. Military Measures In each of the thirty-two cantonments of the National Army and National Guard the medical officers will establish early treatment stations where the men will be examined each time they reenter camp after a leave has been granted and those who have been exposed to any diseases will be treated in the hope of checking their development, especially the venereal diseases. Contagion in diphtheria, meningitis, syphilis, gonorrhoea, and other dangerous diseases can be prevented if handled in time. Thus the Government is safeguarding its men from the consequences of infection by carriers of these diseases, and from becoming carriers themselves, thereby endangering their fellow-soldiers and the civil population. The officers will also lecture to the men on the danger, the contagion, and the ravages of communicable diseases including the venereal diseases. They will try to awaken in each man the realization of what unpatriotic and unwise self-indulgence may mean to his country and to his family upon his return, and to make clear to him that what is done to prevent disease in no way condones sexual license or lessens his responsibility for proper conduct and liability to penalties for failure to maintain such conduct. made centers of commercialized immorality, if the towns permit it. The authority of the War Department ceases outside of Federal ter 2. Control of Camp Environ- ritory and the problem automati ments A law has been passed by Congress under which a five-mile zone has been established around each cantonment, making this circle. amenable to Federal control. These zones will be policed if necessary by military forces in charge of a provost guard, although the Government hopes the civil authorities will take the initiative in enforcing the required measures. Every saloon, every den of vice and prostitution, will be expelled from these zones. The supervision. The supervision of these federalized and cleansed districts will be in charge of the Commissions on Training Camp Activities, established by the Secretaries of War and Navy and ably headed by Mr. Raymond B. Fosdick, an expert in the study of vice conditions. Under these committees games, athletic sports, club houses, libraries, and other healthy diversions will be provided for the soldier. The Surgeon General of the Army in co-operation with the Surgeon General of the U. S. Public Health Service is providing a special officer in each cantonment to assist community organization for combating venereal diseases. cally becomes a civil one. not Local authorities may, through ignorance, or carelessness, realize the gravity of the situation and may even become partners in spoils derived from illicit earnings. Every healthy community is quick to detect wrong-doing. The behavior of men in uniform is particularly noticeable. Public opinion can immediately command the correction of evils both for the protection of the soldier and the civilian. If each town drives immor ality from its doors and cleanses its community, it will help the Government and be doing its bit during these days of undivided responsibility. NOTE: Assistance for campaigns against venereal disease can be obtained from The Council of National Defense, Sub-committee for Civilian Cooperation in Combating Venereal Diseases, Washington Office, Room 144 Old Land Office Building, Washington, D. C.; New York Office, 105 West 40th Street, New York City. The following excerpts are taken from "Do Your Bit to Keep Him Fit," another pamphlet published by the National Defense Council's sub-committee for civilian cooperation in combating venereal diseases: "The world has tried for centuries to solve the old problem of prostitution and its corollary, venereal disease. The greatest obstacle in the solution of this problem has been human nature itself -human nature that has been so blind, so inefficient, so apathetic. that it has not only made few really |