Civics and Health | Page 5

however, and the advantage was proved of
urging health for "society's" sake rather than for health's sake, when the

patronage of the bath jumped at once to considerable proportions.
6. Other people's habits of health influence our well-being quite as
much, if not more, than our own. Because we are social beings, ability
to get along with our families, our friends, our employers, is--at least so
it seems to most of us--quite as important as individual health. For too
many of us, living hygienically is absolutely impossible without
inconveniencing and bothering the majority of persons with whom we
live. I remember a girl in college,--a fresh-air fiend,--who every
morning, no matter how cold, threw the windows wide open. Then,
with forty others, I thought this girl a nuisance as well as a menace to
health, but now, twenty years afterwards, I find myself wanting to do
the same thing. Professor Patten, the economist, whom I shall quote
many times because he is particularly interested in the purpose of this
book, was recently dining at my house and illustrated from his own
health the importance of teaching hygiene so as to affect social as well
as personal standards. "To be true to my own health needs, I ought to
have declined nearly everything that has been offered me for dinner,
but in the long run, if I am going to visit, my eating what is placed
before me is better for society than making those who entertain me feel
uncomfortable."
Most of us know what uphill work it is to live hygienically in an
unhygienic environment. I remember how hard it was to eat happily
when sitting beside a college professor who took brown pills before
each meal, yellow pills between each course, and a dose of black
medicine after the meal was over. Mariano, an Italian lad cured of bone
tuberculosis by out-of-door salt air at Sea Breeze, returned to his
tenement home an ardent apostle of fresh air day and night, winter and
summer. His family allowed him to open the window before going to
bed, but closed it as soon as he was asleep. Lawrence Veiller, our
greatest expert on tenement conditions, says: "To bathe in a tenement
where a family of six occupy three rooms often involves the sacrifice of
privacy and decency, which are quite as important to social betterment
as cleanliness."
To live unhygienically where others live hygienically is quite as

difficult. Witness the speedy improvement of dissipated men when
boarding with country friends who eat rationally and retire early. It
must have been knowledge of this fact that prompted the tramways of
Belfast to post conspicuous notices: "Spitting is a vile and filthy habit,
and those who practice it subject themselves to the disgust and loathing
of their fellow-passengers." It is almost impossible to have indigestion,
blues, and headache when one is camping, particularly where action
and enjoyment fill the day. Our practical question is, therefore, not
"What shall I eat, how many hours shall I sleep, what shall I wear," but
"How can I manage to get into an environment among living and
working conditions where the people I live with and want to please,
those who influence me and are influenced by me, make healthy living
easy and natural?"
7. Because the problems of health have to do principally with
environment,--home, street, school, business,--it is worth while trying
to relate hygiene instruction to industry and government, to preach
health from the standpoint of industrial and national efficiency rather
than of individual well-being. Since healthful living requires the
coöperation of all persons in a household, in a group, or in a
community, we must find some working programme that will make it
easy for all the members of the group to observe health standards. A
city government that spends taxes inefficiently can produce more
sickness, wretchedness, incapacity in one year than pamphlets on health
can offset in a generation. Failure to enforce health laws is a more
serious menace to health and morals than drunkenness or tobacco
cancer. Unclean streets, unclean dairies, unclean, overcrowded
tenements can do more harm than alcohol and tobacco because they can
breed an appetite that craves stimulants and drugs. Others have taught
how the body acts, what we ought to eat, how we should live. We are
concerned here not with repeating the laws of health, but with a
consideration of the mechanism that will make it possible for us so to
work together that we can observe those laws.
CHAPTER II
SEVEN HEALTH MOTIVES AND SEVEN CATCHWORDS

In making a health programme as in making a boat, a garden, or a
baseball team, the first step is to look about and see what material there
is to work with. A baseball team will fail miserably unless the captain
places each