Intensive Health Work
Surgeon-General Blue of the United States Public Health
Service insists that the work and special vigilance of the local health
authorities are of primary importance to the health of the nation. It is not
what the state or federal governments do, but what each individual locality
does that counts.
The Surgeon-General also lays great stress and puts a
special significance on the achievements in the field of preventive medicine
and points to the results obtained during the world war. Anyone familiar with
the history of other wars must realize that hundreds of lives have been saved
as a result of the excellent work in sanitation and preventive medicine, yet,
apparently, if we judge by current reports, these self-sacrificing scientists
obtain less credit for their Herculean work than those who succeeded in
efficient means for material warfare. What can be done among soldiers in the
unfavorable environment of war can certainly be done among the civilian population
under the more favorable conditions of peace.
Every dollar expended by local authorities for public health
work is the best investment from whatever point considered that can be made.
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From The Franklin Times, Louisburg, N.C.,
Friday, April 11, 1919
By Dr. J.E. Malone,
Health Officer
Our City Fathers recently asked us to give them money to
pave the streets. Now we ask them to give us their influence and material aid
to pave the way to good and better health for our town. We want them to pass an
ordinance to require every householder to either connect their homes with the
city sewerage or put in Sanitary Privies.
These Sanitary Privies can cheaply be placed into every
home—proof against the visits of flies that would carry and spread the germs of
contagion from human excrement and filth. With clean premises, Sanitary
Privies, and anti-typhoid injections, our people would be immune from Typhoid
Fever and many other Spring and Summer diseases. When a candidate for a town
office asks you for their vote, ask him how he stands in respect to public
health. Now is the time to prevent Spring and Summer disease. Don’t let the
flies get the start on us—clean up. Screens up. Put in Sanitary Privies and
let’s have a healthy year. Don’t forget to get your anti-typhoid treatment.
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From the Dunn Dispatch, April 10, 1919
After-Effects of
Influenza. . . the Majority of Persons Who Suffered from Influenza Have Been
Left With Problems
Influenza was the direct cause of 9,686 deaths in North
Carolina during October, November and December, 1918, according to the reports
rece4ived by the State Board of Health, and up to March, 1919, the number of
deaths from the disease exceeded 100,000. This loss of life, together with the
suffering and financial cost, is a burden that will take the State many years
to overcome. The most serious results of the epidemic, in the opinion of the
State Board of Health, is the after-effects, which will cripple a majority of
the men and women who suffered from the disease. Injuries to either the lungs,
the kidneys or the heart are a common result of influenza and if persons having
these defects are not treated early the defects will become more pronounced and
lead to handicaps and, in a great many instances, to invalidism and early
death.
The American Public Health Association, through Dr. Lee K.
Frankel, its president, is urging every person who had influenza to go to a
physician and be thoroughly examined in order to find out if any injury was
caused to the vital organs by the disease. If any defects are found in it, of
course, it is highly important to have these treated before they become serious
or permanent. In this connection it is interesting to know that there are 10
counties in North Carolina which are co-operating with the State Board of
Health in providing for these examinations for their citizens. These are
Davidson, Forsyth, Lenoir, Nash, Northampton, Pitt, Robeson, Rowan and Wilson.
Citizens of these counties should ask their health officer for an appointment
for a free examination.
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From the Dunn Dispatch, April 10, 1919
Sleeping Sickness
Here Unlike That Found in Africa
With the encroachment of what is, through error, called
“sleeping sickness” in the South, many people are becoming alarmed, connecting
the American disease with the fatal malady in Africa. Dr. D.L. Munpower, a
medical missionary of the M.E. Church, South, to Africa, now in America on
furlough, stated recently that there is no connection whatever between the two
forms of sleeping sickness.
“In Africa sleeping sickness is caused by the bite of a fly,
and the results are often fatal. At first the victim appears to have malaria,
and within four or five months they are unable to shake off the intense
drowsiness which gradually settles upon them for longer and longer periods of
time. If the disease cannot be broken up before this period, there is little
hope though often the victim lingers for three or four years. It comes on
slowly and lasts a long time.
“The disease called sleeping sickness in America is not
alarming, except that it is new and somewhat strange. But it only lasts a few
weeks, the patient nearly always recovers and, often, is stronger and better
for the experience. It appears to be rather a form of nervous prostration
caused by great physical exhaustion or overstrained nerves. But the two sleeping
sicknesses are not alike in any of their symptoms; and if Americans had seen as
many cases of the real thing as I have in Africa, they would not worry at all
over the disease in their own country.”
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