Clean-up campaigns in your community.

Progress and methods of fly and mosquito extermination in your community.

The work of the Rockefeller Foundation for the extermination of hookworm disease (see references).

Hospitals that serve your community.  Where located.  By whom supported (private, city or town, county, state).

NATIONAL CONTROL OF HEALTH CONSERVATION

Health protection, like education, has been considered primarily the duty of the state.  But many conditions affecting health have arisen that the state cannot completely control.  Chiefly under the power given to it by the Constitution to regulate foreign and interstate commerce (p. 451), Congress has passed many laws that protect health, placing their enforcement in the hands of the several departments of the national government.

HEALTH WORK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

The Department of Agriculture conducts much public health work, through its home demonstration agents, its Office of Rural Engineering, which deals with problems of farm water supply and rural sanitation, its Bureau of Entomology which wages war against flies and other disease-carrying insects, and its Bureau of Animal Industry which inspects cattle, meats, and dairy products.  The Department of Agriculture also administers the Food and Drugs Act, the purpose of which is to secure purity of food products and to require that they and medicinal drugs shall be labeled in such a way as to show what they contain.  Fraudulent and harmful “cures” and “patent medicines” may thus be exposed.

THE PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE

The United States Public Health Service investigates diseases and health conditions and the means of controlling them.  It has given considerable attention to rural sanitation.  It issues reports and other publications of great value to the citizen, some of them being listed at the end of this chapter.  It has representatives in all important foreign ports, inspects all ships that enter American harbors, and holds them in quarantine until they and their passengers are given a clean bill of health.  Cholera and other dangerous diseases have thus been prevented from gaining a foothold on American soil.

HEALTH WORK OF OTHER DEPARTMENTS

The War Department has also waged a relentless warfare against disease, not only in the army itself, but also in the Panama Canal Zone, Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, and other regions occupied by the army.  The Department of Labor seeks to improve the physical conditions of labor for both men and women, and its Children’s Bureau is charged with a study of all matters pertaining to the welfare of children.  In the Department of the Interior the Census Bureau collects national vital statistics; the Bureau of Mines has done valuable work for the prevention of accidents in mines and mining industries; and the Bureau of Education seeks to promote physical education, instruction in home economics, and education in the home relating to the care of children.