Benoa
Belletonte, Pa., March 30, 1917.
THE INFANTILE
SCARE.
PARALYSIS
WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, PH.D. EDITOR.
The panic about infantile paralysis
is due to its mystery rather than to
its peril. In its suddenness it is like
“the pestilence that walketh in dark-
ness.” Its medium of spread has
frankly baffled our best physicians.
The main facts that are known are
these. It is a disease that atrophies
the spinal cord and produces paralysis,
most commonly of the legs. Epidemics
in this country have been somewhat
constant, though scattered, since 1907.
They occur usually in the late summer
and early autumn. The disease in this
continent is confined chiefly to the
northern states and to Canada.
Of children from one to ten years
of age but 4 per cent die of it. It is
rarely fatal. Second attacks do not
occur. Only a very small number of
the attacked are left severely an
helplessly crippled.
WHAT BAFFLES US.
The things that baffle are many.
Supposedly it is contagious, yet evi-
dently it is slightly so. At its height
its prevalence is never anywhere near
as great as that of other common dis-
eases. Males are more subject to it
than females, yet it is females who
have the care of the sick. The ma-
jority of cases cannot be traced to
any known contact, either direct or in-
direct, with any previous case. In
fact, it is not uncommon to hear of
babies being stricken who never were
away from their homes in their lives.
Tt does not seem to follow the main
arteries of travel. For instance, epi-
demics in Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa
and Nebraska followed the epidemic
in New York city, but Chicago, the
point of transfer for all these States,
was free. Its rapid spread over wide
areas is as noticeable as it is unex-
plainable.
Tts most striking peculiarity is its
confinement to the very young. Most
of those who have it are between six
months and three years of age. Ninety
per cent are under SIX.
It does not seem to develop as one
would expect among exposed groups
Of 2070 persons known to be exposed
only 6-10 of one per cert developed
the disease in frank paralytic form.
This is less than 1-15 of the number
that would be expected in similar ex-
posure to scarlet fever. Seldom does
one in a thousand take it who has
been exposed.
It is not strange that there are still
those who claim it is not contagious
at all, or that in England it should be
felt that quarantines are useless.
THE BRIGHT SID.
Some reassuring facts deserve to ke
stated.
Even when there are a number of
genuine cases there is no doubt that
many supposedly sick of it are really
ill from another cause. This is always
true in a panic. The secretary of a
certain board of health stated that he
was certain that many incompetent
physicians who lost children reported
. their deaths as due to infantile pa-
ralysis, knowing that the hasty bur-
jals would conceal their own ignor-
ance. The malady is easily mistaken
for rickets and scurvy and congenital
paralysis. More than one scare has
been occasioned by an isolated death
from some entirely different disease.
Towns that have suffered from an
epidemic seem usually to be immune
for two years. Nobody knows why,
but it is suspected that it is due to
the exhaustion of susceptible material.
HOW IT MAY BE CARKIED.
Our best knowledge at present is
that the disease is borne from place
to place, occasionally by those affect-
ed, possibly by flies and fleas, but
probably more often by adults not
themselves ill who are unconscious
“carriers.” When so carried, it strikes
only those few among little children
who are for some mysterious reason
“susceptible.”
This it not the place to discuss
methods of treatment. It is so far a
disease that chiefly requires good
nursing. If it comes to your own
home, your first care should be to se-
cure a nurse who is skilled, obedient
and acceptable to the sick child.
WHAT ABOUT PREVENTION?
It is our duty to be loyal to the
mandates of our own state board of
health. The state boards now are in
such close communication with each
other that their relations are practi-
cally uniform and are in accord with
the demands of the most enlightened
medical science.
The supplemental acts of local
boards are often foolish and occasion-
ed by local panic. To paralyze busi-
ness, intercourse and commerce by a
shotgun quarantine is usually need-
less, except perhaps in a few border
localities. To close an open-air Chau-
tauqua and allow an indoor fair to go
on, as happened in one town, was
senseless partiality. The effects of
such local arrangements has often
been unwitting . cruelty on the one
hand and bold and perhaps dangerous
running of the gauntlet on the other.
PUBLIC HEALTH IS PRIVATE SAFETY.
Public and private cleanliness is the
best antidote we know. If a town has
a thorough and persistent clean-up
campaign, it is unlikely to develop an
epidemic To keep down the dust is
to keep down diseases. Flies, bedbugs
and rats, the carriers of fleas, are sus-
pect, and ought to be slaughtered on
many accounts. If the disease is pro-
portionately more prevalent in small
than in large places there is no known
reason except that larger cities today
spend more money on keeping clean.
In the home healthipess is a defence.
The little children should be guarded
from debilitation by the so-called
“spring diseases.” In summer we
should avoid overeating, overheating,
fatigue and injuries. Make your home
inaccessible to flies. Keep the chil-
dren’s noses and throats sprayed with
a mild antiseptic. See that the house
is always well aired everywhere, For
those who have reached school age
there is practically no danger.
d | essary to continue
Miss Rankin Will Champion Children.
«One of the things I want to do is
to represent the National’s children in
Congress,” remarks Miss Jeannette
Rankin, of Montana, first woman Con-
gressman, in the Christian Science
Monitor. “The children have never
been represented there. Interests of
all sorts are cared for, but the child
has been left to fare as best he might,
sometimes being blessed with some-
one in Congress who, now and then,
would remember his interests, and
more often not.
“Now, there isn’t any piece of leg-
islation wihch does not, directly or in-
directly, affect the welfare of the
child. In doing what comes to my
hand to do in Congress I intend to re-
member that. Specifically, I shall
stand for widening the sphere of use-
fulness now exerted by the Children’s
Bureau under the Department of La-
bor. That Bureau should be equip-
ped and empowered to do all things
necessary to increase the child’s op-
portunities in all directions. This
touches on education, of course, and
child labor, and even the conduct of
public charities. The child’s educa-
tion should be made of the greatest
possible use to him. Passage of the
child labor law has not left it unnec-
the fight for child
labor. I shall do all in my power to
promote the interests of the child.”
Miss Rankin is expected to bring to
bear on this question the experience
she had in Seattle finding childless
homes for homeless children. She is
well equipped, too, to represent the
suffragists in Congress, for she has
several times done legislative work
for the National Woman Suffrage
Association.
Miss Rankin favors
national prohibition. She is a most
enthusiastic advocate of direct legis-
lation, and she never tires telling
about the strides her home State,
Montana, has taken along this line.
She believes that the iniative and the
referendum should be adopted every-
where. She believes, also, that the
voter should have the right to name
his own candidates for public office.
There is so much of this direct voting
in Montana, she points out, that poli-
ties out there is quite different from
politics in some States. Every voter
feels that he is a politician, in the best
sense of that word, because he has a
direct interest in civic government.
And Miss Rankin is such a firm be-
liever in the people, in the inherent
power and right of the majority to
rule that she would like to see a wid-
er use of direct legislation and choice
of political standard bearers.
As a public speaker, Miss Rankin
has proved that she possesses consid-
erable power. What she has to say is
presented in a clear, logical manner,
and this force is supported by an in-
dividuality which is genial and frank
at all times. She is not the sort of a
suffragist the comic papers like to
caricature. Rather is she quite wom-
anly, and quite as apparently capa-
ble of “taking care of herself,” as the
saying goes, in any situation that con-
fronts her in Congress.
State-wide and
Prime Minister Attended Cobbler’s
Funeral.
About 2 fortnight ago an old man
died in Wales.
He had lived a homely life, full of
Bomely works, among a homely peo-
ple.
He had been the village cobbler of
week days, and had led the worship-
ers in the village church of Sundays.
In all his life, from the day he took
up the leadership of the flock in Cric-
cieth, until age bade him lay by his
pastor’s staff, he had missed but three
Sundays from the pulpit to which
came the hymn of the sea washing
the coast of Wales.
He spoke the soft
tongue of his people. He lived the
life that had been found good in those
regions. He loved God trustingly,
and dwelt close to the consciousness
of all prevailing good. He was ca-
pable of any sacrifice, and made great
and wise ones.
He raised a foster-son.
So sure was he of the gentleness
of God that he died with a mingled
Dreyer and kindly jest upon his
ips.
When he came to be buried his
simply earthly pageant was complet-
» in the way that was familiar to
im.
A rain fell softly from above; tha
surf boomed against the Black Rock
below Criccieth. Four men bore him
in an oak box, built plainly and
sturdily for the uses of eternity. The
new pastor at Criccieth read comfort-
ingly in the soft Welsh tongue.
When it was done the foster-son
of the cobbler-pastor of Wales, the
legatee of the love, trust, hope and
clear ideals of the older man, left the
cemetery, walking bareheaded down
the hill.
It was David Lloyd George, prime
minister of England; a nation’s bul-
wark of wisdom and hope and en-
ergy; the greatest democrat in the
most democratic monarchy the earth
has ever produced. :
‘An old road mender stopped in his
work and watched the wind rumpling
the gray mane, the rain falling un-
heeded upon the bared bowed head.
“He remembered a boy who once
played in the field around Criccieth.
So goes the world. A man broods
over a boy, loves him, gives into the
younger soul all he has. The boy be-
comes a man and broods over a ma-
tion, giving it all that was given him.
Well, well, so pastor-Cobbler Richard
Lloyd was dead and buried! And
there walked Davy Lloyd George,
grown gray and prime minister of
England!
The old road mender spat on his
hands and went back to work.
unintelligible
Al Business Girl.
Cohen—So Sadie has broken der
engagement. Did she gif you back
der ring?
Cohenstein—No, she said diamonts
hat gone up, and she vould gif me vat
1 baid for it.—Boston ‘Transcript.
————————
Po—“Your roommate says that he
is a practical socialist.”
Dunk—“He must be. He wears my
shirts; smokes my tobacco and writes
to my girls.”—Pitt Panther.
The Man who Wants to be Sure
that he is Dressed Right will see that
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BALTO. MD
er and Different
Allegheny Street,
Bellefonte, Pa.
Come to the “Watchman” office for High Class Job work.
EVERYTHING
HAS NOT GONE UP
IN PRICE
All the goods we advertise here are selling at prices prevailing
this time last season.
ERATE.
MINCE MEAT.
MINCE MEAT and
We are now making our
usual high standard; noth
former price of
Fine Celery, Oranges,
Breakfast Foods, Extracts,
line of Washing Powders,
selling at the usual prices.
COFFEES, TEAS AND RICE.
On our Fine Coffees at 25¢, 28¢, 30c,
in price on quality of goods and no ch
ing cut out or cut short and are selling it at our
15 Cents Per Pound.
Grape Fruit,
Baking Powders,
Starches, Blueing and many other articles are
in price and can
All of these goods are costing u
best to Hold Down the Li
market in the near future.
LET US HAVE YOUR ORDER
and we will give you FINE GROCERIES at reasonable prices and give
you good service.
SECHLER & COMPANY,
Bush House Block,
57-1
35c and 40c, there has been no change
ange in the price of TEAS,
be used largely as a substitute for potatoes.
s more than formerly but
d on high prices,
keeping it fully up to our
Apricots, Peaches, Prunes, Spices,
Soda, Cornstarch. The whole
Rice has
we are doing our
hoping for a more favorable
Pa.
Bellefonte,
|
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A Bank Account
Is the Gibraltar of the Home!
If you are a man of family you must have a bank account. A BANK
ACCOUNT IS THE BULWARK, THE GIBRALTAR, OF YOUR HOME,
It protects you in time of need. :
It gives you a feeling of independence.
It strengthens you.
It Is a Consolation to Your Wife,
to Your Children
THE CENTRE COUNTY BANK,
BELLEFONTE