PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION Statutory enactments in the field of public health are not a panacea. Their purpose should be to secure uniformity of procedure, to provide means of coercing those who persist in trespassing on the rights of others and to centralize and define authority. Popular support is only given as the people sec the necessity for protection and feel that the results desired can be secured.
Much more can be accomplished by the education of the public in matters of hygiene and sanitation, which will render compulsory enforcement unnecessary. It is a slow process and must be carefully developed. Avenues of instruction available are through the press, the movies, pamphlets and circulars, lectures, special conferences and exhibits, and instruction in secondary schools. All information imparted should be funda mentally sound and one should avoid making dogmatic state ments about debated points or unsettled questions. It is better to proceed slowly and safely than to later find it neces sary to retract statements. Of the printed channels of com munication the press is probably the best, since a large audience is reached. Articles for this purpose should be brief, to the point and written in simple language. Effective publicity work is quite an art and should receive considerable care and attention.
In the past the field of public health has been chiefly charac terized by the growth and developement of the principles of sanitation, i.e., of the care and attention that must be expended upon the environment of the human race. The greatest
achievements have been realized in the control of the excreta and insect borne infective agents in those communities where their application has been undertaken. One is probably not greatly in error in declaring that in those communities the culti vation of this field has very nearly yielded its maximum fruitage. By this we do not intimate that a decline in the rated value or esteem of sanitation is to be expected, but that the diseases which may be considered at present to be a more or less un solved problem in preventive medicine will be conquered by achievements in the field of personal hygiene. Needless to say the cultivation of this field may not be expected to yield as early a harvest as has sanitation. An enlightened policy on the part of public health officials, together with administration by trained sanitarians, ia other words the activities of a few individuals, can secure all the benefits arming from adequate sanitation to a community, without the very active co-opera tion of the individual citizen. On the other hand, personal hygiene can only be effectively promoted through the aroused interest and education of each individual in the entire popula tion concerned. This stage will arrive slowly and it may require the span of one or two generations before hygiene attains the position occupied by sanitation at the present time.