Hygiene laws, please!

Three times as many infants die here as in England and Germany, and four times as many as in the United States.

We were discussing the health budget in the Senate on June 23rd. A questioner, M. Fernand Merlin, expressed the opinion that the Ministry of Hygiene should be given a definitive constitution. First of all, it should be housed. There is only a facade for the protection of public health. Also our mortality is very high, whereas we could, by intelligently designed and sincerely applied hygiene measures, recover nearly 100,000 human lives per year. Such must be the work of the Ministry of Hygiene

Much was expected of this ministry when it was created some fifteen years ago; what did he give? nothing, or almost nothing. It is a great pity. There is not, all things considered, a question more important or more urgent. The children who want to be born are not numerous enough; let us know how to keep alive those who give us the grace to come into the world. The remedies against the birth rate, those that the “Michelin awards” offer us among others: family voting, allowances for large families, law reform, who knows what else, are legion. On paper, this is all quite attractive. On paper. But I believe, with Ludovice Nandeau, who has just published a remarkable and noted study on this subject in L'Illustration, that “our safeguard is within us, just within us, only within us, and depends only on us. ". There will be cradles in every home, newborns on the threshold of every house, groups of children and at every crossroads, when French mores will once again be disciplined, when we will have finished playing. , in dreadful pessimists, to the fall of France, it will not be tomorrow, believe it. So let's go to the most urgent, that is to say, let's prevent those who can live from dying, let's do childcare. We are terribly behind on this ground..

Do we know that three times more infants die here than in England and Germany, and four times more than in the United States since we rigorously apply the methods of our Pastor!

Do we know that two adults die in England when three die in France, and this difference translates each year for us into the loss of 200,000 French people? Do we know that, since 1870, six million children have died in France, of which three quarters and even more could have been saved?

Do we know that in our beautiful France, the most beautiful country in the world, the second homeland of every civilized man, 150,000 tuberculous, 40,000 cancerous, 100,000 syphilitic patients die each year?

These numbers are impressive. When M. Fernand Merlin, or some other interpellator, quoted them from the tribune of the Senate, do you know what the Minister of Hygiene answered? Mr. Strauss—a competent man, certainly, and full of goodwill—Mr. Strauss therefore replied that he was going to agree with the Ministry of Agriculture on the measures to be taken to ensure the distribution of healthy milk, essential to the children's health! Tomorrow. always tomorrow! What misery !

Salvage measures were taken long ago in England and the British dominions, to follow this example. The right to milk has become a principle there. The milkmen are closely watched, even the passer-by does not escape the surveillance of the policeman. There are hygiene controllers who descend into the kitchens of the big hotels who search the fruit and vegetable merchants as well as the bakers and the confectioners. Do not imagine, however, an avalanche of prescriptions enclosing everyone in an infernal network, no. A few simple, clear, precise laws, but applied without slackness The milkman who fiddles with his milk: 5 pounds fine. If he does it again, he will pay 20 pounds. A third offense is punishable by a fine of 100 pounds and a more or less long ban on selling Finally, in the event of a fourth prank, the license is definitively withdrawn. Result - a drastic decrease in English infant mortality, and the general mortality figure falling to 12/2 from 15/2 as it was per thousand inhabitants in 1900

‘England let’s go to Denmark. In Copenhagen, an average of 20 people per 10,000 inhabitants died each year from tuberculosis; In 1880, a law on the sanitation of dwellings was promulgated, from then on the curve descended, at first imperceptibly, then, from 1890, there were only 20, in 1900 more than 15 and finally in 1922 the number of deaths fell to 9. Denmark as a whole gives only 7.23 tuberculosis deaths per year per 10,000 inhabitants. which is the lowest figure in Europe.

Here is the effect of the laws, why don't we have this legislative apparatus in France? You have to give it to us, we demand it.

We need it, it's a matter of life and death for us We want laws against alcoholism (wouldn't it be advantageous if the habits of drunkenness, duly noted, led to civic forfeiture ?) against these hovels where are piled up, in deplorable hygiene and promiscuity. Many working-class families, and where the morbid germs develop at their ease while the feelings of decency and simple morality atrophy by an unfortunate habituation, lilies of protection against the dreaded syphilis, about which it will be necessary to we were emerging, as the Danes did, from the period of “must we say so”! It is up to the State, supported by the legislator and encouraged by the moralist, to take the lead in the movement of regeneration, because its activity will be permanent, because it alone has the authority, the power of coordination and the necessary means of action. The hecatombs of war impose on him, on him first of all, on all the groups, on all the leagues, then on all individuals, a redoubling of preventive surveillance and preserving solidarity Everything, absolutely everything, must be put into action to lower the rate of our mortality, since it is obvious, alas, that day by day, the French race is shrinking!

Eugene LE BRETON