Other cities and towns which have developed the disease are farther from Waterbury and have undoubtedly been less exposed than have these three well-vaccinated cities.

Not one fatality resulted from 25,000 vaccinations during ΙΟ months in Waterbury. Among several thousand factory employes of whom records were kept, the longest period of disability due to vaccination was seven days. The average period of disability was one-thirtieth of a day-less than one hour per man. Only two per cent of these men lost any time whatsoever from work.

The estimated expense caused to Connecticut and her people by the arrival of of the smallpox-laden North Carolina colored girl in an unvaccinated city is $250,000, besides the unpleasant experience which some 400 Connecticut people have had.

BIRTH REGISTRATION

Mothers of Columbus, are you insisting upon the official registration of your child's birth?

It may seem a small thing, just a few lines in a big book, but it may prove invaluable in future years.

It is not too much to say that a birth certificate may sometimes save the possessor's life, liberty, health or property.

Several men, suspected of being spies, have been executed in Europe because they could not produce birth certificates. They may not have been guilty, but they could not prove their innocence by establishing their nationality.

Europe is so far ahead of America in the matter of registering births their records cover

that they can

hundreds of years not conceive how a grown-up person could lack a birth certificate. And so the firing squad is called much more quickly than we would even imprison a man in this country.

The war has done more to emphasize the importance of birth registration than years of peace could do. Thousands of young men escaped the draft by producing this "little scrap of paper." On the other hand, many slackers were entrapped by officials who produced birth records to show the boy trying to dodge service was within the military ages.

When the army compensation law, to replace the old pension system goes into effect, many widows and mothers will be called upon to prove the ages of dependent children of soldiers. A birth certificate would make this a comparatively easy matter.

Unless the physician who brought these children into the world is still alive and able to swear to the child's birth, many of these women will have to substantiate their claims without the aid of official records. In many cases the task may be hard.

The mothers of the present generation should learn a lesson from this. They should see that the birth of their child is registered immediately. Even parents sometimes may disagree, after a lapse of years, upon the question of their child's day of birth, but the official records will settle the question.

It only takes a few minutes the proper registration of a birth - but it may save years of worry, a valuable inheritance, liberty or even life itself. Columbus Citi

zen.

HYGIENIC SINNERS

We are living in a sanitary age. Sanitation is idealized as a condition necessary to perfect health. The word sanitation is commercialized by the grocer and baker who appeals for trade by advertising his sanitary shop and sanitary goods, and yet whenever we turn we run against practices which are far from sanitary.

The "American Journal of Public Health" points out a few of these practices. They are worth reading; more than they are worth. remembering. Everyone of them breaks the sanitary food law and subjects some one to possible injury:

The waitress who carries a napkind under arm and wipes off your plate with it.

The fruit stand owner who exhales on your apple and polishes it on his sleeve before he sells it to you.

The cook who tastes from the pot and stirs with the tasting spoon.

The street car conductor who holds the transfer slip in his mouth.

The restaurant tootpick.
The roller towel.

The barber who uses a styptic pencil.

The milkman who takes the temperature of the milk with his finger. Warren Tribune.

THE TEACHER'S DUTY

While Health Officer Jones announces that there is not at the present time an epidemic of diphtheria in Lima, and that he does not believe the city is in any immediate danger of one, he does state that an alarming number of cases

of this dread disease are being treated in this community just

now.

The health officer is unable to account for the spread of diphtheria in Lima within the past six weeks. But he does not hesitate to declare that in his opinion the insistent demands of Lima school teachers that children attend school even when they appear in the morning with a report of feeling ill has had a great deal to do with it. He declares in terms that are by no means hard to understand that when a child complains of feeling ill the teacher should immediately safeguard the other pupils by sending the complainant home. Too many instances of children being forced to remain in school despite their protests and in face of their declarations that they were ill have come to his attention, the health officer declares, to lead him to believe that all the teachers are attempting to fully obey the state law governing such cases. That law specifically states that when a child complains of illness such complaint must be investigated and, under no circumstances. shall the complainant be permitted or forced to remain in the school room, thus endangering the health of others.

The first great preventative of diphtheria is carefulness. The teachers are in as good position as parents to show this. It is to them the childish heart turns in time of illness or distress. It is for them to judge whether or not it is best to allow the child to miss a day from school and then find that the illness is not serious, or force attendance and possibly cause a dozen or more pupils to contract a disease that is so fatal in its nature. Lima Times-Democrat.