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

220 THE HEALTH BULLETIN.met with a stormy rebuff, and the doctorwas rudely dismissed from hisfriend's house. But when the youngwoman, whose life with her unfaithfulhusband had made her deeply regretHowher fatal infatuation, felt the firstpains of childbirth, she begged of herparents that her old friend might besent for, and that morning he had deliveredher of a syphilitic child.unlike the previous births at which hehad officiated in this friend's house!It had been the custom to have thedoctor at every birthday dinner giventhe five children, and one of the boysbore his name. There would be nobirthdays for this, the first grandchild,and what could the future promise theyoung mother? Surely, the Novemberday was overcast with clouds for Dr.Smith before its gray light awoke theslumbering city. As he walked thefew short blocks from his friend'sto his own home, he cried in deepestsorrow how many thousands of daughtersmust be sacrificed before their parentswill permit them to walk in thelight of knowledge and not in theshadow of ignorance. After breakfast,which was scarcely tasted, he read inthe morning paper that the announcementthat "Damaged Goods" was to begiven in his University town had metwith such a storm of protest fromthe learned members of the facultythat the engagement had been cancelled."Surely," he said, "the fettersof prudery and custom bind both thelearned and the unlearned."After his morning office hours Dr.Smith visited his patients at the cityhospital. Here is a wreck from cocaineintoxication, the poison havingbeen purchased from a drug storeowned by a prominent local politician.In a padded cell is a man with deliriumtremens, a patron of a gilded saloonrun by another political boss. Inthe lying-in ward are a dozen girls seducedin as many dance halls, withdrinking alcoves. Time will relievethese girls of the products of conception,a longer time will be required tofree them from the diseases whichthey have contracted, but all time willnot wash away the stains on theirlives, and what of the fatherless childrento be born? Thirty beds are filledwith typhoids, who under the best conditionsmust spend long weeks in thebondage of a fever which day by daygradually but inexorably tightens itsgrasp. The furred tongue, glazed eyes,fiushed cheeks, bounding pulses, emaciatedframes, delirious brains wereall due to the fact that a large manufacturerhad run a private sewer intothe river above the water works. Thegreed and ignorance of one businessfirm had been permitted to endangerthe lives of half a million of people.In his family calls the doctor metwith conditions equally lamentable.A fond mother in her ignorance hadnursed a sore throat in one of her childrenwith domestic remedies. Themembranous patches on the tonsils,extending upward into the nasal passagesand downv/ard into the larynx,and the cyanotic face with laboredbreathing showed that even the magicalcurative action of diphtheria antitoxin,that wonderful discovery ofmodern medicine, would be of littleavail in this individual case. The otherchildren were treated with immunizingdoses, and the doctor had the consolationof knowing that death's harvestin that household would be limitedto the one whom the mother's ignorancehad doomed.The next call brought Dr. Smith toa home in which the condition wasequally deplorable and still more inexcusable.One of the children somemonths before had been bitten by astrange cur, which soon disappearedin the alley. The wound was only ascratch and was soon forgotten. Now,the child was showing the first symp-