The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1918 THE PREVAILING PESTILENCE.

Taihape Daily Times, 5 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1918 THE PREVAILING PESTILENCE.

(With wMca is incorporated Thfl FM hape Post t.ad Waitsaii-io News).

In only a few localities in the Dominion is the Influenza-pneumonia plague said to be severe at the present time, and in all other parts, city and country, reports state, the disease has run its course and there is now little fear from it. The retrospect is indeed appalling; the suffering and loss of life has been terrifying in its magnitude and comprehensiveness; from whatever point of view it is regarded it looms up as the most virulent, life-destroying pestilence that has yet raged in Australasia. It is not difficult to form an opinion of what such an outbreak would have extended to even fifty years ago, when antiseptic surgery had not been introduced to general practice, and the germ theory of disease was only in its veriest infancy. There has been no readily acceptible thesis yet advanced why so violent and virulent a visitation has reached an island isolated by the ocean, anly sparsely populated, but there arc the experiences of previous great wars which go to show that it is not at all unusual for the three greatest human scourges to follow in each others train, or even run their ravaging courses concurrently. War, pestilence and famine are companion curses that constitute the sum total of cause for human dread; the greatest war in history is ending, the greatest pestilence with which these islands have been stricken is rapidly dying out, thanks to untiring efforts of medical men assisted by a Public Health Department, and the attainments of modern medical science, linked up with a truly noble army - of nurses and lay workers of both tisexes. It is not known w'hat caused the special outbreak, but it is well-known that it has been checked, and is being stamped right out by the untiring, determined fight put up against it by doctors, nurses and willing lay-workers, many of whom have given their lives to the pestilential Moloch that others might be saved; what greater love is there than this? It is hardly correct to say that the epidemic has caused panic, for there have been none of those manifestations of involuntary ;terror 'which arc of morbid origin, and can only be regarded as moral epidemics, although the people of Auckland may seem to have been on the verge of it. There was no time, in Auckland, however, during the most depressing days of the pestilence when there was anything more than intense natural apprehension of the great gravity of the situation; therefore, there was no emotional interference with the very highest, noblest and most determined campaign against the insidious enemy that it was possible for Auckland people and authorities to institute' and carry through to a successful issue. The terror is rapidly being laved, but one hesitates to contemplate the death-roll which yet remains to be published, a death roll that should not escape the attention of every man and woman loft in the community. It is an established truth that such pestilences fourish most, and are, in fact, kept virile under insanitary conditions; thei'- contagiousness and malignancy is encouraged and intensified where those agencies which should be in common use and practice to maintain perfect physiological and pathological conditions, arc neglected or arc entirely missing. The recent and current experience should urge the public to insist upon a Health Department that docs not wait for an attack to become active, but one that sets -.out with a scheme, scientific and practical, to raise barriers,, to fortify and hedge about the health of the community in a way and to a degree that will invoke a general feeling of security from the insidious attacks of life-destroying bacilli whatever be their nature. Revelations of insanitation in this young country are indeed cause for gravest concern; this Dominion, no less than Britain, cannot prevent the blush of shame pervading its national cheeks owing to its negligence to observe sanitary practices which even the ancients prided themselves in. We talk of physical culture, but do we understand what physical culture means; do we regard it on the .lines of the Platonic ideal polity or as old Greek republics regarded it? That ancient history, the Mosaic code of laws, made sanitation a part of the national religion; the ancients looked upon the preservation of life as being intimately connected with the giving of life, and life was the supreme consideration. In those days it was a

breach of religious as well as of civil or secular law to neglect the sanitation code. The Mosaic law of the ancients contains the most minute directions for the cleanliness of the person, the purification of the dwelling and the camp or town, the selection of healthy and the avoidance of an wholesome food, the seclusion of persons with contagious disorders, and various other matters bearing upon the physical wellbeing of the people, what more is our boasted civilisation doing to-day? It stands to the glorious and eternal credit of the women of America that sanitation made leaps and bounds in the land of our cousins; women realised the menace to the physical wellbeing of the masses and they rose spontaneously, and on their efforts was laid the foundations of a cleaner and healthier era. So prodigious is the practice of slumming and filth iii young New Zealand that a feeling of hopelessness seems to have taken posssssion of the people, yet the subject must bo dak on in hand, and the most vigorous and drastic treatment must be applied if wc are- to have a healthy people. Ignorance is in some measure responsible for localised regimes of filth, and one can daily see the most disgusting practices, even in Taihapc. Amongst the ancients filthy acts and practices were punishable by law; persons and dwellings not in a clean, sanitary condition were subjects for legal retribution. The dirty person, the dirty, house, the dirty camp had to be answered for to a court of justice; such conditions were a menace to the physical well being of cleaner people and they were severely punished. It seems that health of our modern communities can only 'be maintained by an enlargement of the criminal code, by making many additions to the list of indictable offences. First of all. however, want of money must not be an excuse for the menace of filth; no dwelling in a town should be occupied unless it is made as sanitary as it is possible to make it, regardless of the money involved. There is no difficulty about that provision which is not easily ovorcomablc by legislation.