Part 3

“Full directions are in there,” answered Dr. Strong, pointing to an envelope on his desk. “If you’ll look over what I’ve written, and instruct your farmer to follow it out, you’ll have milk that is reasonably good. I’ll go further than that; it will be even good enough to give to the babies of the tenements, if you should have any left over.”

Mr. Thomas Clyde proceeded to rub his chin, with some degree of concentration, whereby Dr. Strong knew that his hint had struck in.

“Meantime,” said Mrs. Clyde, with a trace of sarcasm, “do you expect us to live on condensed milk?”

“Not at all; on certified milk.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Miss Julia, who had a thirst for information.

“What’s a certificate, Junkum?” retorted the doctor.

“That’s what I get when I pass my examinations.”

“Right! Well, milk coming from a farm that passes all its examinations gets a certificate from the Medical Society, which keeps a pretty constant watch over it. The society sees that all the cattle are tested for tuberculosis once in so often; that the cows are brushed off before milking; that the milking is done through a cloth, through which no dirt or dust can pass, into a can that has been cleaned by steam—not by contaminated water—so that no germs will remain alive in it; then cooled and sealed up and delivered. From the time the milk leaves the cow until it comes on your table, it hasn’t touched anything that isn’t germ-proof. That is the system I have outlined in the paper for your farmer.”

“It sounds expensive,” commented Mrs. Clyde.

“Yes; that is the drawback. Certified milk costs from fifteen to twenty cents a quart. But when you consider that nearly half the dead babies were poisoned by bad milk it doesn’t seem so expensive, does it?”

“All very well for us,” said Mr. Clyde thoughtfully. “We can afford it. But how about the thousands who can’t?”

“There’s the pity of it. Theoretically every city should maintain a milk standard up to the requirements of the medical certification, and allow no milk to be sold which falls short of that. It’s feasible, and it could be done at a moderate price if we could educate the farmer to it. Copenhagen’s milk supply is as good as the best certified milk in this country, because the great Danish Milk Company cooperates with the farmer, and doesn’t try to make huge profits; and its product sells under five cents a quart. But, to answer your question, Mr. Clyde: even a family of very moderate means could afford to take enough certified milk for the baby, and it would pay in doctor’s bills saved. Older children and grown-ups aren’t so much affected by milk.”

“I’ll go out to the farm to-morrow,” said Mr. Clyde. “What’s next?”

“Water, Mr. Clyde. I’ve found out where you got your typhoid, last summer.”

“Pooh! I could have told you that,” said Mrs. Sharpless. “There was sewer-gas in the house. It smelled to heaven the day before he was taken down.”

“Isn’t it curious how our belief in ghosts sticks to us!” commented the doctor, chuckling,—“malaria rising from swamps; typhoid and diphtheria rising in sewer-gas; sheeted specters rising from country graveyards—all in the same category.” Grandma Sharpless pushed her spectacles up on her forehead, a signal of battle with her. “Do you mean to tell me, young man, that there’s no harm in sewer-gas?”

“Far from it! There’s harm enough in sewer-gas, but no germs. The harm is that the gas reduces vitality, and makes one more liable to disease attack. It’s just as true of coal-gas as of sewer-gas, and more true of ordinary illuminating gas than either. I’d much rather have bad plumbing in the house than even a small leak in a gas-pipe. No, Mrs. Sharpless, if you waited all day at the mouth of a sewer, you’d never catch a germ from the gas. Moreover, typhoid doesn’t develop under ten days, so your odorous outbreak of the day before could have had nothing to do with Mr. Clyde’s illness.”

“Perhaps you’ll give us _your_ theory,” said the old lady, with an elaboration of politeness which plainly meant, “And whatever it is, I don’t propose to believe it.”

“Not mine, but the City Water Commissioner’s. Mr. Clyde’s case was one of about eighty, all within a few weeks of each other. They were all due to the criminal negligence of a city official who permitted the river supply, which isn’t fit to drink and is used only for fire pressure, to flood into the mains carrying the drinking supply.”

“Then why didn’t the whole city get typhoid?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“Because only a part of the system was flooded by the river water. The problem of the city’s experts was to find out what part was being contaminated with this dilute sewage. When the typhoid began to appear, the Health Department, knowing the Cypress supply to be pure, suspected milk. Not until a score of cases, showing a distribution distinct from any milk supply, had appeared, was suspicion directed to the water supply. Then the officials of the Water Department and Health Department tried a very simple but highly ingenious test. They dumped a lot of salt into the intake of the river supply, and tested hydrant after hydrant of the reservoir supply, until they had a complete outline of the mixed waters. From that it was easy to ascertain the point of mixture, and stop it.”

“Our river water is always bad, isn’t it?” said Mr. Clyde. “Last summer I had to keep Charley away from swimming-school because the tank is filled from the river, and two children got typhoid from swallowing some of it.”

“All foolishness, I say,” announced the grandmother. “Better let ‘em learn to swim.”

“Can’t you swim at all?” asked Dr. Strong, turning to the seven-year-old.

“I went five strokes once,” said Charley. “Hum-m-m! Any other swimming-school near by?”

“No.”

“And are the children about water at all?” Dr. Strong asked the mother.

“Well; there are the canal and the river both near us, you know.”

“Then it comes down to this,” said the doctor. “The liability of typhoid from what water Charley would swallow in the tank isn’t very great. And if he should get it, the chances are we could pull him through. With the best care, there should be only one chance in fifty of a fatal result. But if Charley falls in the canal and, not knowing how to swim, is drowned, why, that’s the end of it. Medical science is no good there. Of two dangers choose the lesser. Better let him go on with the swimming, Mrs. Clyde.”

“Well!” said Grandma Sharpless, “I—I—I—swanny!” This was extreme profanity for her. “Young man, I’m glad to see for once that you’ve got sense as well as science!”

“Do you consider the Cypress supply always safe to drink? Several times it has occurred to me to outfit the house with filters,” said Mr. Clyde.

“No need, so long as the present Water Department is in office,” returned Dr. Strong. “I might almost add, no use anyway.”

“Isn’t filtered water good?” asked Manny. “They have it at the gymnasium.”

“No house filter is absolutely sure. There’s just one way to get a guaranteeable water: distill it. But I think you can safely use the city supply.”

“What next, the water problem being cleared up?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“By no means cleared up. Assuming that you are reasonably safeguarded at home, you’re just as likely—yes, even more likely—to pick up typhoid somewhere else.”

“Why more likely?”

“For some mysterious reason a man accustomed to a good water supply is the easiest victim to a bad. Pittsburg, for many years the most notorious of American cities for filthy drinking, is a case in point. Some one pointed out that when Pittsburg was prosperous, and wages high, the typhoid rate went up; and when times were hard, it went down. Dr. Matson, of the Health Bureau, cleared up that point, by showing that the increase in Pittsburg’s favorite disease was mainly among the newcomers who flocked to the city when the mills were running full time, to fill the demand for labor. An old resident might escape, a new one might hardly hope to. Dr. Matson made the interesting suggestion that perhaps those who drank the diluted sewage—for that is what the river water was—right along, came, in time, to develop a sort of immunity; whereas the newcomer was defenseless before the bacilli.”

“Then a man, in traveling, ought to know the water supply of every city he goes to. How is he to find out?”

“In your case, Mr. Clyde, he’s to find out from his Chinese doctor,” said the other smiling. “I’m collecting data from state and city health boards, on that and other points. Air will now come in for its share of attention.”

Young Manny Clyde grinned. “What’s the use, Dr. Strong?” he said. “Nothing to breathe but air, you know.”

“True enough, youngster; but you can pick your air to some extent, so it’s worth while to know where it’s good and where it’s bad. Take Chicago, for instance. It has a very high pneumonia rate, and no wonder! The air there is a whirling mass of soot. After breathing that stuff a while, the lungs lose something of their power to resist, and the pneumococcus bacillus—that’s the little fellow that brings pneumonia and is always hanging about, looking for an opening in unprotected breathing apparatus—gets in his deadly work. Somewhere I’ve seen it stated that one railroad alone which runs through Chicago deposits more than a ton of cinders per year on every acre of ground bordering on its track. Now, no man can breathe that kind of an atmosphere and not feel the evil effects. Pittsburg is as bad, and Cincinnati and Cleveland aren’t much better. We save on hard coal and smoke-consumers, and lose in disease and human life, in our soft-coal cities. When I go to any of them I pick the topmost room in the highest hotel I can find, and thus get above the worst of it.”

“Don’t tell me that New York is unfit to breathe in!” said Mrs. Clyde, with a woman’s love for the metropolis.

“Thus far it’s pretty clean. The worst thing about New York is that they dry-sweep their streets and throw all the dust there is right in your face. The next worst is the subway. When analysis was made of the tube’s air, the experimenters were surprised to find very few germs. But they were shocked to find the atmosphere full of tiny splinters of steel. It’s even worse to breathe steel than to breathe coal.”

“Any railroad track must be bad, then,” said Mr. Clyde.

“Not necessarily. A steam railroad track runs mostly in the open, and that great cleaner, the wind, takes care of most of the trouble it stirs up. By the way, the cheaper you travel, the better you travel.”

“That sounds like one of those maxims of the many that only the few believe,” remarked Mrs. Clyde.

“You won’t practice it, but you can safely believe it,” retorted the doctor. “The atmosphere in a day coach is always better than in a parlor car, because there’s an occasional direct draft through. As for a sleeping-car,—well, I never get into one without thinking of the definition in ‘Life’s’ dictionary: ‘Sleeping-Car—An invention for the purpose of transporting bad air from one city to another.’”

“The poor railroads!” chuckled Mr. Clyde. “They get blamed for everything, nowadays.”

“It may not be the Pullman Company’s fault that I don’t sleep well in traveling, but they are certainly to blame for clinging to a type of conveyance specially constructed for the encouragement of dirt and disease. Look at the modern sleeping-car: heavy plush seats; soft hangings; thick carpets; fripperies and fopperies all as gorgeous, vulgar, expensive, tawdry, and filthy as the mind of man can devise. Add to that, windows hermetically sealed in the winter months and you’ve got an ideal contrivance for the encouragement of mortality. Never do I board a sleeper without a stout hickory stick in my suit-case. No matter how low the temperature is, I pry the window of my lower berth open, and push the stick under.”

“And sleep in that cold draft!” cried Mrs Clyde.

“My dear Mrs. Clyde,” replied the doctor suavely, “will you tell me the difference between a draft and a wind?”

“Is it a conundrum?”

“No; but I’ll answer it for you. A draft is inside a house; a wind outside. You’re not afraid of wind, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then to you an air-current is like a burglar. It’s harmless enough outside the room, but as soon as it comes through a window and gets into the room, it’s dangerous.”

“Sound common sense!” put in Granny Sharpless. “Young man, I believe you’re older than you look.”

“I’m old enough to know that pure air is better than foul warm air, anyway. Here; I want you youngsters to understand this,” he added, turning to the children. “When the blood has circulated through the system, doing all the work, it gets tired out and weak. Then the lungs bring air to it to freshen it up, and the oxygen in the air makes it strong to fight against disease and cold. But if the air is bad, the blood becomes half starved. So the man who breathes stuffy, close air all night hasn’t given his blood the right supply. His whole system is weakened, and he ‘catches cold,’ not from too much air, but too little.”

“It’s often struck me,” said Mr. Clyde, “that I feel better traveling in Europe than in America. Yet our Pullmans are supposed to be the best in the world.”

“The worst!” declared Dr. Strong forcefully. “The best in luxuries, the worst in necessities. The only real good and fairly sanitary cars operated by the Pullman Company, outside of the high-priced stateroom variety, are the second class transcontinentals, the tourist cars. They have straw seats instead of plush; light hangings, and, as a rule, good ventilation. If I go to the Pacific Coast again, it will be that way.”

There was a pause, in which rose the clear whisper of Bobs, appealing to his mentor, Julia, for information.

“Say, Junkum, how did we get so far away from home?”

“High time we came back, isn’t it, Bobs?” approved the doctor. “Well, suppose we return by way of the school-house. All of you go to Number Three but Betsey, don’t you?”

“And I’m go-un next year,” announced that young lady.

“Perhaps not,” said Mrs. Clyde. “Don’t you think, Doctor, that children are liable to catch all sorts of things in the public schools?”

“Unquestionably.”

“More so than in private schools, aren’t they?”

“Hum! Well, yes; since they’re brought into contact with a more miscellaneous lot of comrades.”

“Which is exactly why I have insisted on our sticking to the regular schools,” put in Mr. Clyde, with the air of quiet decisiveness. “I want our children to be brought up like other children!” The mother shook her head dubiously. “I wish I were sure it is the right place for them.”

“You ought to be sure. I might even say—if you will forgive the implied criticism—that you ought to be surer than you are.”

Alarmed at his tone, the mother leaned forward. “Is there anything the matter at Number Three?”

“Several things. Nothing that you need worry about immediately, however. I’ve been talking with some of the teachers, and found out a few points. Charley’s teacher, for instance, tells me that she has a much harder time keeping the children up to their work in the winter term than at other times.”

“I remember Charley’s tantrums over his arithmetic, last winter,” said Grandma Sharpless.

“My head felt funny. Kinder thick,” defended Charley.

“That is bad,” said Dr. Strong, “very bad. I’ve reported the teacher in that grade to Dr. Merritt, the Health Officer.”

“Reported teacher?” said Charley, his eyes assuming a prominence quite startling. “What for?”

“Starving her grade.”

Mrs. Clyde fairly bounced in her chair. “Our children are not supposed to eat at school, Dr. Strong.”

“Starving her grade,” continued the doctor, “in the most important need of the human organism, air.”

“How do you reach that conclusion?”

“Evidence and experience. I remember in my college days that the winter term was considered to be the most difficult in every year. The curriculum didn’t seem to show it, but every professor and every undergraduate knew it. Bad air, that’s all. The recitation rooms were kept tightly closed. The human brain can’t burn carbon and get a bright flame of intelligence without a good draft, and the breathing is the draft. Now, on the evidence of Charley’s teacher, when winter comes percentages go down, although the lessons are the same. So I asked her about the ventilation and found that she had a superstitious dread of cold.”

“I remember Miss Benn’s room,” said Julia thoughtfully. “It used to get awful hot there. I never liked that grade anyway, and Bobs got such bad deportment marks.”

“Both of the twins had colds all the winter they were in that room,” contributed Grandma Sharpless.

Up went Dr. Strong’s hands, the long fingers doubled in, in a curious gesture which only stress of feeling ever drove him to use.

“‘When will the substitute mothers and fathers who run our schools learn about air!” he cried. “Air! It’s the first cry of the newly born baby. Air! It’s the last plea of the man with the death-rattle in his throat. It’s the one free boon, and we shut it out. If I’m here next winter, I think I’ll load up with stones and break some windows!”

“Lemme go with you!” cried Charley, with the eagerness of destruction proper to seven years. “On the whole, Charley,” replied the other, chuckling a little, “perhaps it’s better to smash traditions. Not easier, but better.”

“But you wouldn’t have them study with all the windows open on a zero day!” protested Mrs. Clyde.

“Wouldn’t I! Far rather than choke them in a close room! Why, in Chicago, the sickly children have special classes on the roof, or in the yards, all through the cold weather. They study in overcoats and mittens. And they _learn_. Not only that, but they thrive on it.”

Mr. Clyde was rubbing his chin hard. “Perhaps our school system isn’t all I bragged,” he observed.

“Not in all respects. You still stick to that relic of barbarism, the common drinking-cup, after filtering your water. That’s a joke!”

“I don’t see the point,” confessed Mr. Clyde. “Whom is the joke on?”

“All of you who pay for the useless filters and then settle doctors’ bills for the disease spread by the drinking-cups. Don’t you understand that in the common contagious diseases, the mouth is the danger point? Now, you may filter water till it’s dry, but if in drinking it you put your lips to a cup soiled by the touch of diseased lips, you’re in danger. We think too much of the water and too little of what contains it. I’ve seen a school in Auburn, New York, and I’ve seen a golf course at the Country Club in Seattle, where there isn’t a glass or cup to be found; and they have two of the best water supplies I know. A tiny fountain spouts up to meet your lips, and your mouth touches nothing but the running water. The water itself being pure, you can’t possibly get any infection from it.”

“Can you get me a report on that for the Board of Education?” asked Mr. Clyde.

“It’s already here,” said Dr. Strong quietly. “That is part of my Chinese job of watch-dog. One other matter. A teacher in another grade, at Number Three, with whom I talked, stood with a pencil, which she had taken from one of her scholars, pressed to her lips. While we talked she gave it back to the child.”

“Well, land sakes!” said Grandma Sharpless, “where’s the harm? I suppose the poor girl was clean, wasn’t she?”

“How do I know? How does anybody know? There is a case on record where a teacher carried the virulent bacilli of diphtheria in her throat for three months. Suppose she had been careless about putting her lips to the various belongings of the children. How many of them do you suppose she would have killed with the deadly poison?”

“Didn’t she know she had diphtheria?” asked Junkum, wide-eyed.

“She hadn’t, dear. She was what we call a ‘carrier’ of disease. For some reason which we can’t find out, a ‘carrier’ doesn’t fall ill, but will give the disease to any one else as surely as a very sick person, if the germs from the throat reach the throat or lips of others.”

“Some lectures on hygiene might not be amiss in Number Three,” said Mr. Clyde.

“That’s what medical school inspectors are for—to teach the teachers. The Board of Education should be getting it started.”

“What are you doing over there, Twinkles?” said Mr. Clyde to Bettina, who had slipped from his knee and was sliding her chubby fist along the window-pane.

The child looked around. “Thwat that fly,” she explained with perfect seriousness.

“She has heard the other children talking about the fly-leaflets that have been scattered around. Where’s the fly, Toodles?”

“Up they-arr,” replied Bettina, pointing to a far corner of the pane where a big “green-bottle” bumped its head against the glass. “Come down, buzzy fly.”

“Now, where,” cried Mrs. Clyde, in despair, “do you suppose that wretched creature came from? I’m so particular always to keep the rooms screened and darkened.”

“Please’m, it might have come from the kitchen,” suggested Katie. “There’s a plenty of ‘em there.”

“And before that it came from your next-door neighbor’s manure-heap,” added Dr. Strong. “That particular kind of fly breeds only in manure. The fact is that the fly is about the nastiest thing alive. Compared to it, a hog is a gentleman, and a vulture an epicure. It loves filth, and unhappily, it also loves clean, household foods. Therefore the path of its feet is direct between the two—from your neighbor’s stable-yard to your dinner-table.”

“Disgusting!” cried Mrs. Clyde.

“Worse than disgusting: dangerous,” returned Dr. Strong, unmoved by her distaste. “A fly’s feet are more than likely to be covered with disease-bearing matter, which he leaves behind him.”

“Something ought to be done about Freeman’s manure-heap, next door. I’ll see to it,” announced Mr. Clyde.

“Doubtless you could report him for maintaining a nuisance,” admitted Dr. Strong; “in which case he might—er—conceivably retort upon you with your unscreened garbage-pails, which are hatcheries for another variety of fly.”

“That’s a beam in the eye for you, Tom,” said Grandma Sharpless.

“Meantime I’ll have the kitchen windows and doors screened at once,” declared Mrs. Clyde.

“That will help,” said Dr. Strong, “though it won’t cure. You can gain some idea, from this matter of the flies, how intricate a social problem health really is. No man sins to himself alone, in hygiene, and no man can thoroughly protect himself against the misdeeds of his neighbor. It’s true that there is such a thing as individual self-defense by a sort of personal fortifying of the body—I’ll take that up some other time—but it’s very limited. You can carry the fight into the enemy’s country and eradicate the evil conditions that threaten all, only by identifying yourself with your environment, and waging war on that basis. Mr. Clyde, do you know anything about the row of wooden tenements in the adjoining alley?”

“Saddler’s Shacks? Not much, except that a lot of Italians live there.”

“Some live; some die. The whole settlement is a scandal of overcrowding, dirt, and disease. I’ve made out a little local health report of the place, for the year. Of course, it’s incomplete; but it’s significant. Look it over.”

Mr. Clyde read aloud as follows:—

Diphtheria 11 cases 2 deaths Measles 20 1 Typhoid fever 4 2 Scarlet fever 13 1 Whooping-cough 20 3 Acute intestinal trouble 45 10 Influenza 16 1 Tuberculosis 6 1 Pneumonia 9 4

“What do you think of it?” asked Dr. Strong.

“It’s a bad showing.”

“It’s a bad showing and a bad property. Why don’t you buy it?”

“Who? I? Are you advising me to buy a job-lot of diseases?” queried Mr. Clyde.

“Well—as a protective investment. We’d be safe here if those tenements were run differently.”

“But we aren’t in touch with them at all. They are around the corner on another block.”