but it also causes a large number of diseases of the circulatory and nervous systems. Doctor Morrow says that the extermination of social diseases would probably mean the elimination of at least one-half of our institutions for defectives. The loss of citizens to the State from the sterilizing influence of gonorrhea upon the productive energy of the family, and the blighting destructive effects of syphilis upon the offspring are enormous. In the opinion of very competent judges social disease constitutes the most powerful of all factors in the degeneration and depopulation of the world. Among the troops stationed in the Phillipines, the venereal morbidity during the year 1904 was 297 per 1,000, largely exceeding the morbidity from malarial. fevers and diarrhea; 22 out of every 1,000 soldiers were constantly ineffective from venereal diseases, four times as many as from any other disease. The statistics of the Navy Department show during the same year, that venereal disease was chargeable with a percentage of 25.2 of the total number of sick days in the hospital from all causes combined. In four years 949 men were discharged from the navy for disability from venereal disease. The statistics of the English army show that among the troops stationed in India 537 per 1,000 were admitted to the hospital for venereal disease. Of the troops returning home to England after completing their time of service in India, 25 per cent were found to be infected with syphilis. No statistics exist for venereal disease in civil life. It may be more prevalent than in the army and navy service since the inhibitory influence of military restraint and discipline do not exist and the opportunities for licentious relations are more abundant. Neisser, a distinguished German authority, states that "fully 75 per cent of the adult male population contract gonorrhea and 15 per cent. have syphilis." What syphilis and gonorrhea represent in the lowered working efficiency of our population-to say nothing of the still more important subject of increased mortality is impossible to estimate; but it would be difficult to overemphasize the grave danger to national efficiency from these and the other venereal diseases, And here again the most striking point is that the venereal diseases are preventable. Alcoholism and drug addiction are maladies of frightful prevalence. They are so familiar as to be taken by many as a matter of course. Venereal diseases and inebriety, whether alcoholic or drug, frequently lead to insanity. Statistics are not yet able to prove conclusively that insanity is increasing, though this is the opinion of the best judges. Dr. C. L. Dana, formerly president of the New York Academy of Medicine, believes the increase in insanity to be real as well as apparent. He says: "The annual increment of insane in Massachusetts, according to the Massachusetts board of lunacy, is 400 in about 10,000, or 4 per cent." At this ratio the annual increment for the United States would be approximately 5,600. "We may say that in the last 25 years the ratio of insane to sane has shown an apparent gradual increase from 1 to 450 to 1 to 300, and this latter seems to be about the ratio in those communities in North America and Europe in which modern conditions of civilization prevail. This average has varied but little in the last few years; the slight yearly increase probably will not change rapidly and probably not continue, for when the increase in the insane reaches a certain point of excess society will have to take notice of it and correct it." There are no accurate figures of the number of insane. Mr. Sanborn estimates that the number exceeds 250,000 in the United States. Among defective and disabled classes are to be especially mentioned the feebleminded, paralytic, crippled, blind, and deaf mutes. The aggregate disability of these groups is greater than is commonly recognized. The preventability is still less appreciated. With reference to the losses each year from industrial accidents: The statistical report of the Interstate Commerce Commission for the year ending June 30, 1907, shows that during that year 11,800 persons were killed and 111,000 injured on our American railways, these figures including passengers, employees, and all other persons. A large number of the victims were railway employees, for whose safety Congress has passed a number of laws. The total number of cases of industrial accidents can not be estimated, owing to the lack of statistical information; but Census Bulletin 83 gives the number of deaths by accident and violence in 1900 at 57,500. "Of 29,000,000 workers in the United States over 500,000 are yearly killed or crippled as a direct result of the occupations in which they are engaged-more than were slain and wounded throughout the whole Russo-Japanese war. More than one-half this tremendous sacrifice of life is needless." Mr. Frederick L. Hoffman estimates that the number of accidents among men employed in the United States in 1906 was 208,000, of which about 5,000 were fatal. These figures are exclusive of mining, railway, and shipping accidents. John Mitchell estimates that for every 100,000 tons of coal produced in the United States one mine worker is killed and several injured. In 1907 the figures were 2,500 coal miners killed and 6,000 seriously injured. In Wisconsin from October 1, 1906, to October 1, 1907, the total number of accidents reported which incapacitated the victim by at least two weeks was 13,572 The accidents to employees constituted 53 per cent. of this number. Special trades have special perils for workmen. "Among diseases to which workmen are most often subject are the so-called 'inanition, scrofula, rachitis, pulmonary consumption, dropsy;' also rheumatic troubles, pleurisy, typhoid fever, gangrene, and the various skin diseases. Every epidemic, be it typhoid, smallpox, scarlet fever, dysentery, cholera, etc., draws its greatest army of victims from this class. For every death that occurs among the richer and higher classes there are many in the working class. It is the workman engaged in unhealthy factories first of all who fills the hospitals and their death chambers." It is the pollution of the air breathed by workmen, whether the pollution come through poisons or through dust, that makes many trades dangerous. Among poisonous trades are the many lead-using industries, foundries, and chemical factories. Investigation of the dust-producing trades have been made, showing the results on the respiratory systems. Hirt's statistics show that men employed in dust-producing occupations suffer much more frequently from pneumonia and consumption than do those not exposed to dust. The relative frequency of these diseases per 100 workmen is as follows: Cases of consumption and pneumonia per 100 workers in certain occupations. Mr. Owen R. Lovejoy, secretary of the national child-labor committee, has condensed a table from Indiana reports showing the high injury rate suffered by children in the industries. Injuries to children in Indiana, 1907. Proportion of adults injured.... Proportion of children injured.... 5 per 1,000 3 per 1,000 20 per 1,000 10 per 1,000 The injury rate for children is shown to be three to four times as great as for adults. WHAT A DENTIST IS DOING. Princeton, Indiana, has within its walls a live dentist. This live man has organized the dentists of the city and has instituted, without expense to the people, the important work of inspecting the teeth of school children. At the Lowell building in one day the teeth of sixty-eight children were examined and of that number only seventeen had sound teeth. The teeth of the remaining fifty-one were decayed more or less, and they will be repaired. The teachers are showing great interest in the work and instructions are being given to the children for the care of their teeth. The parents of the pupils, too, have begun to see the importance of the work, and whereas the dentists in the beginning were laughed at and the spitters on the corner joked about them, now they are being praised. However, the dentists do not care for the praise of the sidewalk spitters. This class of people cannot help onward any good cause by their praise or condemnation. They are simply neutral bodies in their community, except so far as distributing disease is concerned: In that line they are positive nuisances. Dr. J. W. Roper is the dentist who has taken the lead in this important work. He says: "I feel that dental inspection is progressing quite satisfactorily, and I am quite sure that the teachers will bear me out in this statement that free dental inspection is doing great good for the children." Dr. Roper is State Chairman of the Dental Education and Oral Hygiene of the State Dental Association. As chairman of this committee he is trying to interest dentists in dental inspection throughout the State. The dentists who are assisting Dr. Roper in Princeton are J. A. Brumfield, Dr. W. T. Dorsey and Dr. Montgomery. What a refreshing thing it is to find citizens who are desirous of helping little children. The very desire and especially the effort itself will lift these citizens up and make them better men, and the community and the children will be benefited. This conservation of human energy by caring for the teeth of little children is a matter the importance of which cannot be exaggerated. FOOD TALK By Dr. J. N. Garfunkle, At the Columbia Congregational Church. Each individual has two inherent phases of life-the outer and the inner, or an objective self and a subjective self. The objective self is represented by the physical body and objective mind, with its five senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. It is the part of the individual that is at the mercy of human judgment, as every thought and act of daily life is incorporated in the mental structure and impressed upon the physical tissues, making them more perfect and enduring, thus increasing happiness and prolonging life! Else is destructive in tendency, leading to suffering, disease, crime and early death. There is no intermediate point of indifference or standing still in nature. The objective self, both physically and mentally, is constantly changing for better or worse, the new cells of daily growth are stronger and more vital with each cycle, or weaker from deterioration, and living then becomes scientific to the degree that all action, whether in thought, labor or recreation, is elevating, progressive and just to one's self and to others, thus building possible objective life. Objectively speaking I have imposed a duty upon myself to assist if possible in the betterment of mankind, taking advantage of a pschycological moment in the work of a better food supply. Food, life's fuel performs an important function in the development or destruction of man's character. Life machinery must run smoothly, thus the pain and suffering of diseases, crimes, mistakes and all kinds of vital ruptures may be While it requires a gradually avoided. certain amount of directed effort to pursue a systematic course of living, that is free from injury,it is easier to live right, when one knows how, than to live in a drifting manner, and suffer the consequences. As a few generations are regulated to the simple natural life that would sustain itself for centuries, it becomes "bred in the bone". The desire for crime and destructive tendencies is gradually lost, hence long life becomes an inheritance as well as a product of direct effort. But under the existing conditions of food supply these ideals. are impossible. What may a housewife expect who goes into a store, where no food regulations, national, state or municipal would exist? If she asks for butter she may get oleomargerine or renovated butter; for honey, glucose or a mixture thereof is substituted; for pepper, an article adulterated by the addition of starch and ground shells is given her; for jelly, some fruit juice, usually derived from apple cores and skins rejected in drying, mixed with glucose, preserved with salicylic acid and colored with some sort of aniline dye. The peas or beans may contain, especially if they are very green, considerable quantities of that poisonous substance, sulphate of copper; the prepared meat or sausage, boric acid and usually some coloring matter to intensify the real color of the meat: the codfish may be preserved with boric acid instead of old fashioned common salt; the sardines purporting to be of French origin may have been caught off the coast of Maine, and instead of being packed in olive oil as we would expect are often packed in cotton seed oil. She may get tub oysters highly dosed with borax; (in this State of Ohio, however, this would be almost impossible at the present time as a new oyster law went into force recently, prohibiting the adulteration of oysters), milk and cream containing formaldehyde; maple molasses made of glucose and melted brown sugar olive oil that's wholly cotton seed oil or mixed with cotton seed, peanut or sesame oil; white wine almost saturated with sulphurous acid; red wine made partly of sugar and not wholly of the juice of the grape; Mocha and Java coffee from Brazil, yet bearing the false name; cream made of milk thickened with viscogen and artificially colored, and so on down. the list. Tea has been adulterated; coffee beans made out of rye paste, creased and colored to look like the real thing flour adulterated with white earth or bleached; candy with the same material; common spirit vinegar, sold as cider vinegar, all forms of adulteration of spices; butter adulterated with water, casein, lard and tallow; smoked hams that smoke never touched and which obtained their color and flavor from a poisonous solution called liquid smoke, a creosote preparation; baking powders with the labels written by the prince of liars, cream, colored artificially and preserved by rank poison; sausage made of stale meat unfit for human use, brightly colored by an injurious preservative; maple syrup of brown sugar and a beautiful label; New Orleans molasses as nearly like the genuine as a decrepit negro would be like the Venus of Milo; milk the special food of babies and invalids and the universal food of the people, diluted, skimmed and poisoned; veal from the calves killed within fortyeight hours after birth, the law requires from one month to six weeks; cheese robbed of butter fat and filled with hog fat; canned goods, full of water and injurious preservatives; artificial eggs, accompanied by an artificial cackle, adulterated beer, adulterated whiskey, adulterated wines, adulterated drugs, cottonseed oil sold for olive oil, honey mixed with glucose, lard containing costic lime, starch and cottonseed oil; pears colored with poisonous copper, nearly everything which can be used for drink or food has been sold to the American people in recent years under the name of pure food products, and exhibited in so-called pure food shows. The existence of extensive harmful adulterations of food products was distinctly recognized by the New York State Court of Appeals in the following language: "It is notorious that the adulteration of food products has grown to proportions so enormous as to menance the health and safety of the people." Ingenuity keeps pace with greed and the careless and heedless consumers are exposed to increasing perils. To redress such evils is a plain duty but a difficult task. These are not exaggerations, but, on the contrary, mild statements. Under these conditions there are three courses of procedure to the people of this country: first, the people can rest satisfied without opposition, shut their eyes and deceive themselves, and say such conditions do not exist, that there was no embalmed beef, no adulterated foods, General Miles was wrong, Dr. Wiley was wrong, chemists are cranks, but our food manufacturers are angels. Another method. to be pursued, let each consumer fight his own battle against these powerful food adulterating interests. Let the laboring man feed himself and family, and how much our political parties concern themselves, that he should have a full dinner pail, full of embalmed beef, sausage loaded with potato flour, oleo |