effectually substituted for neglect as the general rule, will the
statistics begin to show the merits of the particular methods of
attention adopted. And as we are far from having arrived at this
stage, being as to health legislation only at the beginning of
things, we have practically no evidence yet as to the value of
methods. Simple and obvious as this is, nobody seems as yet to
discount the effect of substituting attention for neglect in
drawing conclusions from health statistics. Everything is put to
the credit of the particular method employed, although it may
quite possibly be raising the death rate by five per thousand
whilst the attention incidental to it is reducing the death rate
fifteen per thousand. The net gain of ten per thousand is
credited to the method, and made the excuse for enforcing more of
it.


STEALING CREDIT FROM CIVILIZATION

There is yet another way in which specifics which have no merits
at all, either direct or incidental, may be brought into high
repute by statistics. For a century past civilization has been
cleaning away the conditions which favor bacterial fevers.
Typhus, once rife, has vanished: plague and cholera have been
stopped at our frontiers by a sanitary blockade. We still have
epidemics of smallpox and typhoid; and diphtheria and scarlet
fever are endemic in the slums. Measles, which in my childhood
was not regarded as a dangerous disease, has now become so mortal
that notices are posted publicly urging parents to take it
seriously. But even in these cases the contrast between the death
and recovery rates in the rich districts and in the poor ones has