What is the duty of the State in regard to:

I. SICKNESS AND PREVENTABLE DEATH? Physical ills are the unavoidable
lot of the human race; but by no means to the extent to which they
now prevail. A very large percentage of existing sickness and infirmity
could have been prevented by a timely application of such knowledge
as the intelligent already possess. It is the poverty, the crowded
and unsanitary living conditions, the ignorance and helplessness of
the masses, that perpetuate all this unnecessary suffering, this economic
waste, this drag on human efficiency and happiness. Not only from
humanitarian motives, but also from regard for national prosperity
and virility, it behooves the State to wage war against preventable
illness and safeguard the general health.

How shocking conditions are, in view of the sanitary and medical
knowledge we now possess, we are not apt to realize. It is estimated
that of the three million or so who are seriously ill in this country
on any average day, more than half might have been kept well by the
enforcement of proper precautions; that of the 1,500,000 deaths that
occur annually in the United States, nearly half could have been
postponed. Tuberculosis, for example, is not a highly contagious or
rapid disease; it is absolutely preventable by measures now understood,
and almost always curable in its earliest stages. Yet half a million
people in our country are suffering from it, and about 130,000 die
of it annually. Typhoid, which could readily be as nearly eradicated
as smallpox has been, claims some 30,000 victims annually. It has been
estimated by various statisticians that the nation could save a billion
dollars a year through postponing deaths, and at least half as much
again by preventing illness that does not result fatally. Tuberculosis