Assistant Professor Public Health Nursing, 1 P. M. Nutrition. University of California, Berkeley.

Entered as second-class matter February 21, 1922, at the post office at Sacramento. California, under the
Act of August 24, 1912.
Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917.

Vol. II, No. 24

No Community Pollution of
Streams is Hope for Future.

JULY 28, 1923

Surgeon General Hugh S. Cummings of the United States Public Health Service, is reported to have said recently that the day may come in American city planning when no sewage or other pollution of streams will be permitted. He says that stream pollution is a civic crime but one that is necessary now in certain instances because of prevailing conditions. He says:

cities are permitted to dispose of raw sewage into streams, such practice is not permitted if any other adequate method is available. Advance in sewage disposal methods as well as in garbage disposal is urgently needed. Sanitary engineers throughout the world are endeavoring to solve the magnitudinous problems connected with the proper disposal of all community wastes. The Surgeon General sees hope for the solution of the vexing conditions that lead to the comtude would indicate that it may not be munity pollution of streams. His attilong before community sewage disposal can be effected without polluting any

Our laws, fortunately, prohibit the

We have gone through the surface closet stage and we shall no doubt get beyond the stream. stage which legalizes and approves emptying the waste of our cities into streams. There are other legitimate uses of streams which promiscuous pollution of waterways, are in sharp conflict with the pollution habit. Bathing in rivers and creeks, boating, water sports, hydroplaning and fishing must be taken

into consideration.

The sewage question is one of the most vital with which the modern city has to deal. It is the first that city planners consider, and I am glad that we have made substantial progress toward solving it. There are many evidences that in the future it will be entirely solved. Mill neighborhoods housing thousands of people now destroy sewage with chemicals instead of pouring it into streams. This idea is extending to all communities.

which type of pollution is exceedingly dangerous to the provision of pure water supplies. If it were as simple to properly dispose of sewage as it is to provide pure water, most of our sanitary engineering obstacles would be removed. Chlorination in the treatment of water supplies is one of the greatest boons to community health that has ever been devised. In some cases, the same treatment is applicable to the effluent from municipal septic tanks and the California State Board of Health is urging such treatment wherever it may be practicable. California sanitary engineers are making use of every available device in the solution of these problems and every In California, considerable progress advance in improved methods of dishas been made in the treatment of sew-posal that may be made will be taken age affluent and while it is true that some advantage of in this state without delay.

It is announced, further, that the United States Public Health Service is now working on the most exhaustive treatment of stream pollution that it has ever undertaken. The results of this work will be printed early in the fall.

Organized Public Health
Growing in Rural Districts.

In his paper on "The Place of Medicine in Public Health," presented before the American Medical Association in San Francisco, Dr. Walter M. Dickie, Secretary of the California State Board of Health, made reference to the destruction of the isolation of the rural community and its effect in advancing the public health of the rural districts. He said:

Each year, in California the line of demarcation between rural and urban life becomes less easily distinguishable. It would seem that the time is not far distant when the most remote section of the state will be provided with as highly organized public health service as the most thickly congested municipalities. #

Cauterize Dog Bite Wounds
With Fuming Nitric Acid.

It is essential that wounds from dog Rural life in America has completely bites be cauterized immediately with changed during the past decade. The urbanization of the rural districts of America is taking fuming nitric acid. Carbolic acid or place so rapidly that it would seem doubtful other phenol derivatives should, in no if we are fully aware of its significance. The cases, be used. Fuming, concentrated former isolation of the rural communities is nitric acid is the only agent that, if disintegrating so rapidly that the United States, even now, is fast becoming one, big city. quickly and properly administered, is Improved transportation is perhaps the greatest known to be effective in the destruction factor in bringing about the change. Improved of the causative organisms of rabies is the newest, have also helped. Travel, with when present in wounds. This does not its educational advantages and the rapid spread mean that the use of nitric acid cauteriof ideas, is reorganizing completely the old- zation obviates the necessity of administime rural mode of living. As a result, there is a continued advance in the economic and tering the Pasteur treatment if the social viewpoint of rural residents. The path biting animal is known to be rabid of this advance is indicated in the development or is suspected of being rabid. Cauteriof rural union schools, co-operative marketing zation by this method should never be

means of communication, of which the radio

organizations, the farm bureau movement, university extension and library service. It is shown in the expressed desire of rural residents to possess all the attributes for better living, which through their former isolation

have been denied to them.

Aids Rural Districts.

Rural districts, until the past few years, have almost without exception, lacked machinery for safeguarding public health. At the present time, however, there is a tremendous impetus to the establishment of full-time health departments in rural communities. Stimulated by the activities of the International Health Board, these newly formed public health units are extending health education in the rural districts as well as safeguarding the health of rural residents. In fact, the demand for fulltime county health departments is so great in many states that it is impossible to find trained public health men to administer such units. Rural America is waking up to the strides that urban America has made in keeping urban residents in good health, and when rural America once advances, it advances permanently, solidly and resolutely.

neglected, as it may constitute a distinct factor in preventing the development of rabies in the person bitten. Local health officers are urged to make this method of wound cauterization a matter of common knowledge in their respective communities.

"God lent his creatures light and air,
And waters open to the skies;
Man locks him in a stifling lair,
And wonders why his brother dies."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D.

Without the "betterment of public health" no lasting progress can be made, since, as living beings subject to the great biologic laws, our actual existence can be secured only through the understanding and control of the factors that hamper or favor human welfare. Ray Lyman Wilbur, M.D., President, Stanford University.

are

While Dr. Dickie was speaking from a nation-wide viewpoint, his remarks Our growing youth need instruction in are specially true of California. The health matters. They need not only to know rural communities of Los Angeles, life for their own protection, but to protect Orange, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo the lives that will be dependent on them as Our greatest service and Monterey counties are definitely to the human race can be done only when we they grow to maturity. organized for the promotion of their help to make possible a marked increase in health. Already our efforts public health with a full-time health positive crowned with a marked prolongation of life, officer in charge of each unit. In most particularly through the economic productive of these counties, such units include the period. We can free human beings from entire county, both urban and rural many of the things that bring them down before the race is run. As a race, our success territory. Many other counties in this is dependent on the strong and the reproducstate are providing adequate part-time tion of the strong. In the control of the service to their rural districts. The full-human germ plasm lies man's future. In this time plan, however, is productive of

great field we have not as yet even reached the amateur stage. Ray Lyman Wilbur, M.D..

State Board of Health Abates
Pasadena Sewer Farm Nuisance.

"What lengthens life reduces the death rate."-Dr. Louis I. Dublin.

United States only in the vicinity of San The total eclipse of the sun, visible in the Diego and at Catalina will provide an unusual spectacle at the Health Officers' Conference at Coronado, September 10th.

The State Board of Health and the Dr. Matthias Nicoll Jr., who has been health officer of Los Angeles County Deputy Commissioner of Health for New secured an order from the superior York State has been appointed Commissioner court of that county, July 18th, for the of Health to succeed the late Dr. Hermann M. Biggs. abatement of a sewage disposal nuisance at the Pasadena city sewer farm. The action followed the refusal of the city of Pasadena to carry out the orders of the State Board of Health, issued last February, which specified that the city's sewage must be restrained upon the sewer farm until such time as an actiThe most important single item in a life vated sludge plant, now under construc- table is the figure for mortality in the first tion, is placed in operation. The out-year of life. Fifteen per cent of all the flow sewage has, for sometime, been deaths that occur each year are of children within the first year of age. Infant mortality permitted to flow down to San Pasqual cuts heavily into the expectation of life. The Wash through San Gabriel and Wilmar. death of an infant erases the entire expectaThe court order gives specific instruction for the disposal of the sewage by means of portable surface distributing flume, the use of additional irrigators and other equipment. The new activated sludge plant will, it is planned, be ready for use in November. Meanwhile, the city of Pasadena is obliged to eliminate all nuisances connected with the temporary disposal of its sewage.

"In the past public health work has been, broadly speaking principally concerned with those things which could be done in the manner of handling communities in the mass, or things that could be done for the average citizen without the citizen himself being obliged to display any particular effort or initiative. The public health work of the future will deal increasingly with principles and practices of personal hygiene, for the successful consummation of which the average citizen must do a considerable part of the work himself in cooperation with the health administrator."-Eugene R. Kelly, M.D., State Commissioner of Health for Massachusetts.

death at the advanced years, say beyond sixty, removes only comparatively few years of expectation, The reduction of infant mortality is, therefore, one of the most important elements in a program of public health administration.—Wisconsin State Board of Health Bulletin.

tion for than life, whereas a

Competent authorities have estimated that, albuminuria through the detection and treatment of and of syphilis in pregnant women, fully one-half of the mortality of infants under one month of age could be saved. The extension of good obstetrical also holds out high promise for a real achieveservice to the great body of American women ment in the prevention of early infant aim mortality. The of the public health movement should be to have an infant mortality rate which is practically irreducible, and that condition has not been attained anywhere.-Wisconsin State Board of Health

111 cases of diphtheria have been reported, as follows: Los Angeles 41, Los Angeles County 15, Glendale 7, San Francisco 18, Sacramento County 1, Berkeley 2, Stanislaus County 2, Fresno 3, Bakersfield 1, Santa Clara County 1, Daly City 1, Alameda County 1, Santa Cruz 1, Tulare County 1, Mountain View 1, Alameda 1, Calaveras County 1, El Monte 1, Hawthorne 1, San Joaquin County 2, Sacramento 2, Long Beach 1, Exeter 1, Oakland 3, Richmond 2.

Measles.

302 cases of measles have been reported, as follows: Los Angeles 57, Palo Alto 6, Stanislaus County 5, Oakland 5, Santa Clara County 8, Alameda 8, Sacramento 6, Sonoma County 28, San Joapuin County 6, Beaumont 7, Los Angeles County 15, San Francisco 72, Piedmont 2, Tehama County 1, Mendocino County 3, Alameda County 1, Contra Costa County 3, Orland 3, Alturas 2, Redlands 1, Fullerton 1, Lompoc 1, Gilroy 2, San Bernardino 4, Madera County 1, Napa 4, Fresno 4, Colton 1, Santa Paula 1, San Diego County 1, Ventura 1, Berkeley 1, Vacaville 3, Oceanside 2, San Leandro 4, Glendale 1, Humboldt County 2, Orange 1, Santa Monica 1, Lodi 3, Alhambra 4, El Segundo 3, Los Gatos 1, Tuolumne County 2, Calistoga 5, Claremont 1, Dixon 1, Modesto 3, Amador County 1, Clovis 1, Sacramento County 2.