The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

20 The Health Bulletin Aj)ril, 192:
plishing something which is the hope of
every man interested in the public
health. That is the actual extermination
of a fatal disease.
So far as my knowledge goes there
is only one disease which has ever been
wiped off the face of the earth, and
that disease was one which was not
known to attack man. It was a certain
infectious pneumonia of cattle which
was prevalent in Texas some thirty
years ago. Theobald Smith, then in the
government service, found the cause of
the infection and succeeded in actually
stamping it out. We believe that, today,
that particular disease germ is as
extinct as the dodo.
We now have another such an opportunity
in rabies. It might take many
decades to exterminate it in Russia and
in China, but even there it is not hopeless,
and in our own country it could
be done in five years.
One state alone could not do it, and
my talk is therefore, appropriate for a
meeting of neighborly states, but so far
as I am concerned, I would like to see
my own State make the beginning.
ANIMALS EXA>nNED AND PATtENTS
TREATED
Patients
Positive Negative Total Treated
1908 (5 mos.) 20 13 33 42
1909 83 24 107 157
1910 73 "93 166 159
1911 87 54 141 151
1912 151 126 277 224
1913 179 145 324 297
1914 169 195 364 191
1915 136 157 293 181
1916 155 212 367 250
1917 296 264 560 362
1918 237 216 453 459
1919 229 191 420 517
1920 207 206 413 473
1921 323 224 547 643
1922 381 540 921 855
1923 596 557 1,153 1.108
1924 638 666 1,304 1,288
1925 813 895 1,70S 1.850
1926 638 927 1,565 1,790
TOTAL 5,411 5,705 11,116 10,997
THE HIGH COST OF SICKNESS
Dr. C. C. Burlingame, in addressing
a recent convention, made a striking
and timely plea for the wider application
of business methods to hospital
operation and for the enforcement of
those economies without which the high
cost of sickness will never be reduced.
No other country had raised hospital
construction to the high level it has attained
in America. Our institutional
buildings are characterized by beauty,
cheerfulness, convenience, healthfulness
and an extraordinary suitability, in
gross and in detail, for the purpose for
which they were erected. Highly skilled
experts supervise the smallest minutiae
of plan and equipment, and devise
meritorious improvements almost daily.
Able and enthusiastic men and women
staff most of these institutions, and as
a net result they serve certain groups
with a perfection which fifteen or
twenty years ago would have seemed
incredible.
Extremes meet in the personnel of the
group that gets the completest service,
for among these happy patients are
both the very rich and the very poor.
The wealthy enjoy every diagnostic,
medical, surgical and therapeutic advantage
the institution can muster because
they are able to pay for it whatever
be its cost. The indigent command
the skill of crack surgeons and
si^ecialists and receive very much the
same sort of treatment for nothing, or
next to nothing, because no hospital
worthy of the name is content to give a
patient anything less than its best.
A large percentage of hospital inmates
lack these advantages, for it Is
they who are the great financial middle
class, composed of self-respecting persons
who are too proud to accept free
service and too poor to be able to afford
costly private rooms, highly paid
surgeons and the expensive laboratory
studies which have done so much to
take the guesswork out of modern medicine
and surgery. They flock to the
cheapest rooms, employ the best professional
service they can pay for, deny
themselves all but the most essential
attention, and finally leave the institution
with depleted savings, after having
received less for their money than the
free patient got for nothing. In other
words, they are penalized for their selfrespect
and for their determination to
pay their own way.
Common observation goes to confirm
the truth of the picture Doctor Burlingame
has drawn ; but conclusive proof
of its correctness is to be found in the