OCR Text |
Show In the last fiscal year the federal health service ser-vice visited over sixteen thousand rural homes in eight different states. Information as to the prevalence of diseaso and insanitary conditions was obtained nnd complote sanitary surveys of the promises conducted. This may read like a dry paragraph from a dry health report, but listen. Those vislU reduced the typhoid fevor rate to one-half, somotlmu more. In other words, Uncle Sam wont to tho lair of the typhoid ty-phoid germ and conquered it, for tho visits were only made to districts where there were epidemics epidem-ics of typhoid fevor. Here nre sevoral instances. In Berkeley county, W. Va., tho casos of typhoid were reduced from two hundred forty-nino to forty in one year. In Orange county, N. C, the enses were reduced from fifty-nine to seventeen. Operations in rural sanitation prove that advancement ad-vancement in maintaining hygienic and satisfactory satis-factory surroundings in country districts Is possible pos-sible by tho application of common principles of preventive medicine. "Insanitary conditions exist ex-ist Inrgely because they are not known to be such," says the report of the health service, just issued. "Actunl demonstrations of their harm-fulness, harm-fulness, together with definite recommendations for their conection, remain one of the most gratifying and successful methods for institution institu-tion reforms nnd has been invariably accompanied accom-panied by definite ana measureablo results." |