Part 15

“Much more so. As soon as the children get used to it, they love it, and they object strenuously to going back into the close rooms. The body grasps and assimilates the truth; the mind responds.”

“Well, I like to be comfortable as well as anybody,” said Mrs. Sharpless, “but I don’t consider it the chief end of life.”

“Not the chief end,” assented Dr. Strong; “the chief means.”

“Comfort and health,” mused Mrs. Clyde. “It seems a natural combination.”

“The most natural in the world. Let me put it into an allegory. Health is the main line, the broad line, the easy line. It’s the simple line to travel, because comfort keeps pointing it out. Essentially it is the line of the least resistance. The trouble with most of us is we’re always unconsciously taking transfers to the cross-lines. The transfer may be Carelessness, or Slothfulness, or Gluttony, or one of the Dissipations in food, drink, work or play; or it may be even Egotism, which is sometimes a poison: but they all take you to Sick Street. Don’t get a transfer down Sick Street. The road is rough, the scenery dismal, and at the end is the cemetery.”

“That’s the end of all roads,” said Grandma Sharpless.

“Then in Heaven’s name,” said the Health Master, “let us take the longest and sunniest route and sing as we go!”

XI. THE BESIEGED CITY

To Bettina falls the credit of setting the match to the train. That lively-minded young lady had possessed herself of a large, red square of cardboard, upon which, in the midst of the Clyde family circle, she wrought mightily with a paint-brush.

“What comes after p in ‘diphtheria,’ Charley?” she presently appealed to her next older brother.

Charley considered the matter with head aslant. “Another p,” he answered, tactfully postponing the evil moment.

“It doesn’t look right,” announced the Cherub, after a moment’s contemplation. “Dr. Strong, how do you spell ‘diphtheria’?”

“I? Why, Toots, I spell it with a capital, but leave off the final x,” replied the Health Master cheerfully. “What kind of a game are you playing? Quarantining your dolls?”

“It isn’t a game.” Betty could be, on occasion, quite a self-contained young person.

“What is it, then, if I’m not prying too far into personal matters?”

“It’s for Eula Simms to put on her house.”

“The Simmses _will_ be pleased,” remarked Julia.

“They ought to be,” said Betty complacently. “I don’t suppose they can afford a regular one like the one we put up when Charley had scarlet fever, two years ago. And Eula’s big sister’s got diphtheria,” she added quite casually.

“What’s that?” The Health Master straightened up sharply in his chair. “How do you know that, Twinkles?”

“Eula told me across the fence this morning. She’s excused from school. Three other houses on the street have got it, too. I’m going to make placards for them.”

“And do the work in play that the Health Department ought to be doing in the deadliest earnest! What on earth is Dr. Merritt thinking of?” And he went to the telephone to call up the Health Officer and find out.

“We’re due for a bad diphtheria year, too,” observed Grandma Sharpless, whose commentaries on practical matters, being always the boiled-down essence of first-hand observation, carried weight in the household. “I’ve noticed that it swings around about once in every five or six years. And it was six years ago we had that bad epidemic.”

“Then there is the influenza epidemic of last spring to consider,” said Mrs. Clyde. “Dr. Strong told us then that we’d have to pay for that for months. So, I suppose, the city is still in a weakened condition and easy soil for diphtheria or any other epidemic.”

“There’s measles already in our school,” said Julia. “That’ll help, too.”

“Why haven’t you reported it, Junkum?” asked her father. “You’re Chairman of the Committee on School Conditions of the Clyde Household Protective Association.”

“We only found out to-day,” said Bobs, “when they told us maybe school would close.”

“Three years I’ve been President of the Public Health League,” remarked Mr. Clyde with a wry face, “and nothing has happened. Now that I’m just about retiring I hope there isn’t going to be serious trouble. What does the Health Department say, Strong?” he inquired, turning as the Health Master entered.

“Something very wrong there. Merritt won’t talk over the ‘phone. Wants me to come down.”

“This evening?”

“Yes. He’s ill, himself, and badly worried. What do _you_ think?”

“It looks like some skullduggery,” declared Mr. Clyde, borrowing one of his mother-in-law’s expressive words. “Is it possible that reports of diphtheria are being suppressed, and that is why the infected houses are not placarded?”

“If it is, we’re in for trouble. As I told you, when I undertook the Chinese job of keeping this household in health,” continued the Health Master, addressing the family, “I can’t reliably protect a family in a community which doesn’t protect itself. There are too many loopholes through which infection may penetrate. So the Protective Association, in self-defense, may have to spur up the city to its own defense. First, though, I’m going over the throats of this family and take cultures.”

“You don’t think,” began the mother anxiously, “that the children—”

“No; I don’t think they’ve got it. But the bacteriological analysis will show.”

“I hate to have it done,” said Mrs. Clyde, shuddering. “It seems so—so inviting of trouble.”

“Superstition,” said Dr. Strong, smiling. “Aren’t you just as anxious to find out that they _haven’t_ got the infection as that they have? Come on, Bettykin; you’re first.” And, having prepared his material, he swabbed the throats of the whole company, after which he took the cultures with him to Dr. Merritt.

It was late when he returned, but he went direct to Mr. Clyde’s room.

“It’s worse than I thought, Clyde,” said he. “We’re in the first stage of a bad epidemic. The reports have been suppressed by Mullins, the Deputy Health Officer.”

“What did he do that for?”

“To cover his own inefficiency. He is City Bacteriologist, also, and the law requires him, in time of epidemic, to make bacteriological analyses. He doesn’t know how. So he simply pigeonholed the case reports as they came in.”

“How did such a rascal ever get the job?” asked Clyde.

“Political pull. The most destructive of all the causes of death which never get into the mortality records,” said Dr. Strong bitterly.

“How many cases?”

“Three or four hundred, at least. It’s got a good start. And more than that of measles. While he was in the business of suppressing, Mullins threw a lot of measles reports aside, too. I don’t like the prospect.”

“The first thing to do,” decided Mr. Clyde, with customary energy, “is to get Dr. Mullins out. I’ll call an emergency meeting of the Public Health League to-morrow. By the way, Julia has some matters to report from school.”

“Well, suppose we call an emergency meeting of our own of the Household Protective Association for to-morrow evening,” suggested Dr. Strong. “Since we’re facing an epidemic, we may as well fortify the youngsters as soundly as possible.”

Directly after dinner on the following evening the Association was called to order by Mr. Clyde, presiding. It was a full meeting except for Maynard, who had not returned for dinner. First Dr. Strong reported that the cultures from the throats of the family had turned out “negative.”

“So we don’t have to worry about that,” he remarked.

Whereupon Mrs. Clyde and her mother drew long breaths of relief.

“And now for the Committee on School Conditions,” said Mr. Clyde.

“All I’ve heard of in our school is measles,” announced Julia. “There’s a lot of the boys and girls away.”

“No diphtheria?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“I asked Miss Brown that at recess, and she looked queer and said, ‘None that we know of.’ But I heard of some cases in the Academy; so I told Manny.”

“Why Manny?” asked Mrs. Clyde.

“He’s Chairman of the Committee on Milk, and the Bliss children from our dairy go to the Academy.”

“That explains why Maynard isn’t here, then,” said the grandmother. “I suppose he’s gone out to the farm.”

“Yes. He took the interurban trolley out, to make sure that they’d be careful about keeping the children away from the dairy.”

“Good team-work, Junkum,” approved the presiding officer.

“And I asked Mary and Jim Bliss to come around to-morrow to see Dr. Strong and have him look at their throats.”

“You ought to be drawing a salary from the city, young lady,” said the Health Master warmly. “You may have stopped a milk-route infection; one of the hardest kind to trace down.”

“They’re talking of closing school after to-morrow,” concluded the girl.

“The very worst thing they could do,” declared Dr. Strong.

“The very best, I should think,” controverted Grandma Sharpless, who never hesitated to take issue with any authority, pending elucidation of the question under discussion. “If you group a lot of children close together it stands to reason they’ll catch the disease from each other.”

“Not unless you group them too close. Arm’s length is the striking distance of a contagious disease. _There’s_ a truth for all of us to remember all the time.”

“If it _is_ a truth,” challenged Mrs. Sharpless. “One of the surest and one of the most important,” averred the Health Master. “The only substance that carries the contagion of diphtheria or measles is the mucus from the nose or throat of an infected person. As far as that can be coughed or sneezed is the danger area. Of course, any article contaminated with it is dangerous also. But a hygienically conducted schoolroom is as safe a place as could be found. I’d like to run a school in time of epidemic. I’d make it a distributing agency for health instead of disease.”

“How would you manage that?”

“By controlling and training the pupils hygienically. Don’t you see that school attendance offers the one best chance of keeping track of such an epidemic, among the very ones who are most liable to it, the children? Diphtheria is contagious in the early stages, as soon as the throat begins to get sore, and before the patient is really ill. Just now there is an indeterminate number of children in every one of our schools who have incipient diphtheria. What is the one important thing to do about them?”

“Find out who they are,” said Julia quickly. “Exactly. If you close school to-morrow and scatter the scholars far and wide in their homes, how are we going to find out this essential fact? In their own homes, with no one to watch their physical condition, they will go on developing the illness unsuspected for days, maybe, and spread it about them in the process of development. Whereas, if we keep them in school under a system of constant inspection, we shall discover these cases and surround them with safeguards. Why, if a fireman should throw dynamite into a burning house and scatter the flaming material over several blocks, he’d be locked up as insane. Yet here we propose to scatter the fire of contagion throughout the city. It’s criminal idiocy!”

“If we could only be sure of controlling it in the schools,” said Grandma Sharpless, still doubtful.

“At least we can do much toward it. As a matter of fact the best authorities are very doubtful whether diphtheria is a ‘school disease,’ anyway. There is more evidence, though not conclusive, that measles is.”

“Surely we don’t have to consider measles now, in the face of the greater danger.”

“Most emphatically we do. For one thing, it will increase the diphtheria rate. A child weakened by measles is so much the more liable to catch any other disease which may be rife. Besides, measles spreads so rapidly that it often kills a greater total than more dangerous illnesses. We must prepare for a double warfare.”

“At the Public Health League meeting,” said Mr. Clyde, “the objections to closing the schools came from those who feared that an official acknowledgment that the city had an epidemic would hurt business.”

“A viciously wrong reason for being right,” said the Health Master. “By the way, I suppose that Dr. Mullins will be Acting Health Officer, now that Merritt is unfortunately out of it. Merritt went to the hospital in collapse after the session of the Board of Education at which he appeared, to argue for keeping the schools open.”

“No,” said Clyde. “We’ve blocked Mullins off. But it’s the next step that is troubling me. What would you do, Strong, if you were in control?”

“Put a medical inspector in every school,” answered Dr. Strong instantly. “Send home every child with the snuffles or an inflamed throat. And send with him full warning and instructions to the parents. Have daily inspection and instruction of all pupils.”

“Can you make school children understand?”

“Why not? It is merely a matter of telling them repeatedly: ‘Keep your fingers and other objects away from your mouth and nose. Wash your hands frequently. Brush your teeth and rinse your mouth well. And keep your distance. Remember, that the striking distance of disease is arm’s length.’ Then I would break class every hour, throw open every window, and march the children around for five minutes. This for the sake of improved general condition. Penalize the pupils for any violation of hygienic regulations. Hygienic martial law for war-time.”

“Good!” applauded Mr. Clyde. “So much for the schools. What about the general public?”

“Educate them to the necessity of watching for danger signals; the running nose, the sore throat, the tiny pimples on the inside of the mouth or cheek which are the first sign of measles. Above all, furnish free anti-toxin. Make it free to all. This is no time to be higgling over pennies.”

“I don’t like the principle of coddling our citizens by giving to those who can afford to pay.”

“Better coddled citizens than dead children. Unless you give out free anti-toxin, physicians to families where every dollar counts will say, ‘Oh, it may not be diphtheria. We’ll wait and see, and maybe save the extra dollars.’ Diphtheria doesn’t wait. It strikes. Then there is the vitally important use of anti-toxin as a preventive. To render a whole family immune, where there is exposure from a known case of diphtheria, is expensive at the present rates, but is the most valuable expedient known. It is so much easier to prevent than to cure.”

“All right; I give in. What else?”

“Education, education, education; always education of the public, till the last flame is stamped out. Get the press, first; that is the most direct and far-reaching agency. Then organize public meetings, lectures, addresses in churches and Sunday schools, talks wherever you can get people together to listen. That is what I’d do.”

“Go ahead and do it, then.”

“Easily said,” smiled the Health Master. “Who am I, to practice what I preach?”

“Provisional Health Officer of Worthington,” came the quick answer. “I have the Mayor’s assurance that he will appoint you to-morrow if you will take the job.”

“I’ll do it,” said the Health Master, blinking a little with the suddenness of the announcement, but speaking unhesitatingly, “on two conditions: open schools and free anti-toxin.”

“I’ll get that arranged with the Mayor. Meantime, you have unlimited leave of absence as Chinese physician to the Clyde household.”

“But the Household Protective Association will have to back me,” said Dr. Strong, as the meeting broke up. “I can’t get along without you.”

Swiftly and terribly moves an epidemic, once it has gained headway. And silence and concealment had fostered this onset from the first. Despite the best efforts of the new Health Officer, within a week the streets of the city were abloom with the malign flower of the scarlet for diphtheria and the yellow for measles.

“First we must find out where we stand,” Dr. Strong told his subordinates; and, enlisting the services of the great body of physicians,—there is no other class of men so trained and inspired to altruistic public service as the medical profession,—he instituted a house-to-house search for hidden or undiscovered cases. From the best among his volunteers he chose a body of auxiliary school inspectors, one for every school, whom he held to their daily régime with military rigor.

“But my patients are dying while I am looking after a roomful of healthy children,” objected one of them.

“You can save twenty lives by early detection of the disease, in the time it takes to save one by treatment,” retorted the disciplinarian. “In war the individual must sometimes be sacrificed. And this is war.”

The one bright spot in the early days of the battle was Public School Number Three which the twins and Bettina attended. The medical inspector who had this assignment was young, intelligent, and an enthusiast. Backed by Dr. Strong, and effectively aided by the Clyde children, he enforced a system which brought prompt results. In every instance where a pupil was sent home under suspicion,—and the first day’s inspection brought to light three cases of incipient diphtheria, and fifteen which developed into measles, besides a score of suspicious symptoms,—Julia, or Robin Clyde, or one of the teachers went along to deliver printed instructions as to the defense of the household, and to explain to the family the vital necessity of heeding the regulations until such time as the physician could come and determine the nature of the ailment. Within a week, amidst growing panic and peril, Number Three was standing like an isle of safety. After that time, not a single new case of either disease developed from exposure within its limits, and in only two families represented in the school was there any spread of contagion.

“It’s the following-up into the house that does it,” said Dr. Strong, at an early morning meeting of the Household Protective Association (he still insisted on occasional short sessions, in spite of the overwhelming demands on his time and energies, on the ground that these were “the only chances I get to feel the support of full understanding and sympathy”), “that and the checking-up of the three carriers we found.”

“What’s a carrier?” asked Bettina, who had an unquenchable thirst for finding out things.

“A carrier, Toodlekins, is a perfectly well person who has the germs of disease in his throat. Why he doesn’t fall ill himself, we don’t know. He can give the disease to another person just as well as if he were in the worst stages of it himself. Every epidemic develops a number of carriers. One of the greatest arguments for inspection is that it brings to light these people, who constitute the most difficult and dangerous phase of infection, because they go on spreading the disease without being suspected. Now, I’ve got ours from Number Three quarantined. If I could catch every carrier in town, I’d guarantee to be in control of the situation in three weeks.”

“Our reports show over twenty of them discovered and isolated,” said Mrs. Clyde, who had turned her abounding energies to the organization of a corps of visiting nurses.

“Perhaps I’d better say something about carriers in my next talk,” said Grandma Sharpless, whose natural gift as a ready and convincing speaker, unsuspected by herself as well as her family until the night when she had met and routed the itinerating quack on his own platform, was now being turned to account in the campaign for short talks before Sunday schools and club gatherings.

“Develop it as part of the arm’s-length idea,” suggested the Health Master. “Any person may be a carrier and therefore a peril on too close contact. Tell ‘em that in words of one syllable.”

“Never use any other kind when I mean it,” answered Mrs. Sharpless. “What about that party at Mrs. Ellery’s, Manny?”

“I’ve got that fixed,” replied Maynard Clyde, who had been acting as general factotum for the household in its various lines of endeavor. “Mrs. Ellery gave a party to our crowd Friday night,” he explained to Dr. Strong, “and Monday one of the Ellery girls came down with diphtheria.”

“What have you done about it?” asked the Health Master.

“Notified all the people who were there. That was easy. The trouble is that a lot of the fellows have gone back to college since: to Hamilton, Michigan, Wisconsin, Harvard, Columbia,—I suppose there were a dozen colleges represented.”

“And you think that’s too wide a field for the follow-up system?” asked his father.

“Why, no,” said the boy thoughtfully. “I figured that starting a new epidemic would be worse than adding to an old one. So I went to Mrs. Ellery and got a list of her guests, and I wrote to every college the fellows have gone back to, and wrote to the fellows themselves. They probably won’t thank me for it.”

“They ought to give you a life-saving medal each,” declared Dr. Strong. “As for the situation here”—his face darkened—“we’re not making any general headway. The public isn’t aroused, and it won’t be until we can get the newspapers to take up the fight. The thing that discourages me is that they won’t help. I don’t understand it.”

“Don’t you? I do,” said Clyde grimly. “Their advertisers won’t let ‘em print anything about it. As I told you in the matter of closing the schools, business is frightened. The department stores, theaters, and other big advertisers are afraid that the truth about the epidemic would scare away trade. So they are compelling the papers to keep quiet.”

“Idiots!” cried Dr. Strong. “Suppressing news is like suppressing gas. The longer you do it, the more violent the inevitable explosion. But when I called on the editors, they didn’t say anything to me about the advertising pressure. It was, ‘We should be glad to help in any way, Dr. Strong. But an alarmist policy is not for the best interests of Worthington; and the good of our community must always be the first consideration.’—Bah! The variations I’ve heard on that sickening theme today! The ‘Press,’ the ‘Clarion,’ the ‘Evening News,’ the ‘Telegram, the ‘Observer’—all of ‘em.”

“You didn’t mention the ‘Star,’” said Grandma Sharpless.

“That rag? It’s against everything decent and for everything rotten in this town,” said Clyde.

“When I need a danger signal,” observed the old lady with her most positive air, “I’ll wave any kind of rag. The ‘Star’ has circulation.”

“Yes,” admitted the Health Master, “and among the very class we want to reach. But what’s the use?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Sharpless. “But I’m going to find out.”

One hour later she walked into the editorial sanctum of Mr. “Bart” Snyder, editor, proprietor, and controlling mind of as “yellow” a sheet as ever subsisted on a combination of enterprise, real journalistic ability, and blackmail. Mr. Snyder sat in a perfect slump of apparent languor, his body sagging back into his tilted chair, one foot across his desk, the other trailing like a broken wing along the floor, his shrewd, lined face uplifted at an acute angle with the cigar he was chewing, and his green hat achieving the most rakish effect possible to a third slant. His brilliant gray eyes were narrowed into a hard twinkle as he surveyed his visitor.

“Siddown,” he grunted, and shoved a chair toward her with the grounded foot.

Grandma Sharpless did not “siddown.” Instead she marched over to a spot directly in front of him, halted, and looked straight into the hard, humorous face.

“Bartholomew Snyder,” said she crisply, “I knew you when you were a boy. I knew your mother, too. She was a decent woman. Take off that hat.”

The Snyder jaw fell so unpremeditatedly that the Snyder cigar dropped upon the littered floor. One third of a second later, the Snyder foot descended upon it (and it was a twenty-cent cigar, too) as the Snyder chair reverted to the perpendicular, and the Snyder hat came off. The Snyder countenance quivered into articulation and therefrom came a stunned, “Well, I’ll be—”

“No, you don’t! Not in _my_ presence,” cut in his visitor. “Now, you listen.”

“I’m listening,” he assured her in a strangled murmur.