THE PUBLIC HEALTH. And the Young Idea.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 161, 1 August 1903, Page 8

THE PUBLIC HEALTH. And the Young Idea.

IN a recent local boat accident, but for the piovideatial presence of a medical man, a boy would have died. Among a whole steamer's ciew, and a crowd of spectators, no one knew anything about the restoration to vitality of a peison appaiently drowned. A man up North a week or so ago was shot in the leg. His kindhearted mates carried him with all speed to thei nearest doctor, but he bled to death on the way. Every week one leads of the increasing mortality among infants due to improper feeding, and is appalled at the number of good human lives that might be saved if the average person possessed a little moie piactical knowledge. In the fust case, the boy was by the sheeiest luck saved, and in the shooting case the man's life might easily have been saved by the use of a. common stick and handkerchief tourniquet, about which the party concerned knew nothing Mr. Seddom says that a book on public health is to be issued to schools, and provision is to be made for teaching children the evils arising from the excessive consumption of food or dunk, and the probabilities are that gi een apples and gingerbeer have a special chapter all to themselves. The metallic bottled vileness doing duty as raspberry syrup, and the "foods" that the maker allege render it unnecessary fo. a patient to use the digestive organs Providence has suppliad, might also get a par. A youngster who knows the wav to draw a map of the Scally Isles, and cannot bandage a cut, is not as useful a citizen as he might be, and a boy who knows how to pump an appaientlydrow ned person dry need not have crossed the Pons Asmorum to be useful to his fellows. The probabilities are that this new health book, of which the Premier speaks, will give pictures of different "interiors" under the influence of tea, gingerbeer, raspberry syrup, and whisky, which would be another blow to the prohibitionists. + -v + Seriously, the colonial youngster knows little enough of the effects of any of these things, and the country is crying aloud for moie useful light. Every youngster knows the evils arising from, alcohol — a party existing only for that purpose teaches him. A "hot>bread" prohibition party looks silly on paper, but it is wanted. A "limitation of banquets" party would be a godsend, and a "tea and tattle prohibition alliance" might save many a man from dyspepsia. Unquestionably, "health classes" are urgently required, and sample medical measures ought not to

be meiely pai rot-taught, but should be demonstrated by competent pel sons. If a common, ordinary scihooJboy saw an artificial "stomach" under the influence of 31bs of green apples, a bottle of "pop," and a penn'orth of led and white lolly-stick, he would become a convert to commonsense hygiene.