People Anxious to Read The demand for the three sex hygiene pamSex Hygiene Booklets phlets recently issued by the State Department of Health, as evidenced in individual calls for copies from various parts of the state, indicates a most encouraging interest in this subject among the people of Ohio.

The three pamphlets, as announced in last month's JOURNAL, are: "Instructing Your Child in the Facts of Sex" (for parents), "Some Things a Young Man Ought to Know About Sex and Sex Diseases" (for young men and older boys) and "How Any Boy Can Develop His Health and Strength" (for younger boys).

The Department will be glad to fill further calls for these pamphlets and will appreciate the efforts of any one who is willing to help in introducing them to the people of the state.

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Urban Hog-Keeping Again The State Department of Health has Calls Forth Protest recently received two complaints regarding the keeping of hogs in municipalities. To both of these the reply was that the abatement of this or any other nuisance is a matter within the jurisdiction of the local health board. only. The State Department of Health cannot legally take any action in such a matter.

This Department, however, is not bound to keep silent on the general question of hog-keeping in towns, and these letters impel it to register again an emphatic protest against the growing movement to relax the regulations against this practice on patriotic grounds.

To raise more food is indeed a patriotic purpose. This method of raising food, however, can not be carried out in an urban community without great danger to the public health. And no act which endangers the public health can be considered patriotic.

The average pigpen is an unexcelled breeder of flies, and flies are carriers of typhoid fever and of babies' intestinal disorders. Moreover, the existence of filthy pigpens can not be expected to have any effect other than a damaging one upon a community's sanitary standards. These considerations are all aside from the very apparent unpleasantness of having pigpens crowded among human habitations, for odor and other unpleasant features are not in themselves dangerous to health. When such unpleasant features are accompanied by actually dangerous features, however, we fail to see much argument for permitting pigpens.

We must keep our food supply up to its maximum point, but pork can not be valued in terms of human lives, especially when there are so many places outside of town where hogs can be raised.

Three More Department The Department has lost the services of Men Enter War Service another Division head and of two members of the staff of sanitary engineers, all of whom have gone into war service. Dr. Robert G. Paterson, director of the Division of Tuberculosis, will go to Italy with the Red Cross commission headed by Dr. R. H. Bishop, Jr., Cleveland health commissioner, to fight tuberculosis in that country. Assistant Engineers M. Z. Bair and Harry E. Miller have been granted commissions in the maintenance and repair branch of the construction division of the Quartermaster Corps of the Army- the former as captain and the latter as first lieutenant. They will do sanitary engineering work.

Congratulations upon their opportunities to be of service and best wishes for success in their new work are offered by the members of the Department staff to these new members of the honor roll as they take their departure.

Municipal Public Health In this issue of the JOURNAL is reprinted an Organization in Ohio article on "Municipal Public Health Organization," which appeared in the Monthly Bulletin of the California State Board of Health. Many of the comments made by the author with regard to the way California cities measure up to his ideal statement of health department activities would apply equally well to the situation in Ohio cities.

Here, too, part-time administration and inadequate appropriations cause many vital phases of public health work to be neglected. Quarantine, abatement of nuisances and registration of vital statistics in too many cities comprise practically all of the health department activities. In some cases there is in addition to these a limited amount of laboratory work, a limited amount of public health nursing service, a limited amount of food supervision and a limited amount of medical supervision of schools.

Nowhere except in a few of our largest cities will a well-rounded system of public health administration be found. Only in a few instances. is there reasonably adequate epidemiological work, child hygiene work and sanitary supervision - three broad classes of health activity which must be carried on fully and intelligently if the highest degree of improvement in the public health is to be achieved.

Fifty cents per capita - the amount stated in this article as the minimum expenditure necessary to provide a city with an adequate public health administration is certainly a sum which any community — ought to be willing to spend to obtain the protection which such a health

department would afford. The health officer who can educate his community up to this point of view will be doing his constituents a great service.

Now They Blame the Poor
Horse for Typhoid Fever

Why we need public health education is indicated by the following choice bits of misinformation recently published:

Arthur Brisbane, the country's highest salaried editorial writer, recently informed readers of the Hearst newspapers that "the civilized world as a whole opposes the use of horseflesh, and there is usually a substantial reason for a feeling so widespread. The typhoid germ develops in the horse, not elsewhere. Man can get typhoid only from the germ that has lived in the horse's body."

And from an Ohio newspaper is taken an item to the effect that a small boy in an Ohio town, upon seeing a friend run over by a horse, fell into convulsions, which developed into typhoid fever and caused the boy's death.

Perhaps the latter example indicates that the Brisbane theory ought to be extended so as to say that not only eating horseflesh, but even seeing a horse, may cause typhoid fever. For our part, however, we shall continue to inform the public from time to time, as has been our custom, that "the typhoid germ develops only in human filth and causes. typhoid fever only when swallowed."

SCARLET FEVER EPIDEMIC DUE TO MILK INFECTION A typical milk-borne epidemic of scarlet fever was that which raged in Salem in February and March. The Salem health officials learned February 10 that a case of scarlet fever existed in the family of a dairyman in an adjoining township, who had been selling milk in Salem. It was found that the dairyman's house had been placarded by the health authorities of his township, but that he had meanwhile continued supplying milk to his customers. The milk The milk sale was at once stopped, but the damage had been done during the preceding six or seven days.

In two or three days after the investigation and stoppage of sale, numerous reports of scarlet fever cases in Salem began to come in. The epidemic reached its height between February 25 and March 1. From February 9 to March 18, eighty-five cases were reported. Of these, sixty-five cases were in families supplied with milk by the infected dairy. Thirty-five cases were reported in three days, showing that a common carrier was responsible for the infection.

This is the first positively established milk-borne scarlet fever epidemic on record in Ohio. An epidemic in 1911 in Portsmouth was believed to be milk-borne, but the evidence was not conclusive.

Ohio's Tuberculosis Hospital Equipment

* There are 50 more beds available for public use in privately operated hospitals; there are also 212 tuberculosis beds in two state insane hospitals and the Soldiers' Home at Dayton.

* See discussion of these costs in body of article.