_Instinct_ was the first health officer and made the first health laws. Instinct warns us against unusual and offensive odors, sights, and noises, just as it causes us to seek that which is agreeable. Primitive man in common with other animals learned by sad experience to avoid certain herbs as poisons; to bury or to move away from the dead; to shun discolored drinking water. During the roaming period sun and air and water acted as scavengers. When tribes settled down in one spot for long periods, habits that had hitherto been inoffensive and safe became noticeably injurious and unpleasant. Heads of tribes gave orders prohibiting such habits and restricting disagreeable acts and objects to certain portions of the camp. Instinct places outhouses on our farms and then gradually removes them farther and farther from dwellings. In many school yards, more particularly in country districts and small towns, outhouses are a crying offense against animal instinct. In visiting slum districts in Irish and Scotch cities, and in London, Paris, Berlin, and New York, I never found conditions so offensive to crude animal instinct as those I knew when a boy in Minnesota school yards, or those I have since seen in a Boy Republic. But the evil is not corrected because it is not made anybody's business to execute instinct's mandates. In the Boy Republic the leaders were waiting for the children themselves to revolt, as does primitive man. TABLE I TYPHOID A RURAL DISEASE[1] ==========================================+============+============== | Average | Average | Per Cent | Typhoid Fever | of Rural | Death Rate | Population | per 100,000 ------------------------------------------+------------+-------------- Five states in which the urban | | population was more than 60% of the total | 30 | 25 | | Six states in which the urban population | | was between 40% and 60% | 49 | 42 | | Seven states in which the urban | | population was between 30% and 40% | 67 | 38 | | Eight states in which the urban | | population was between 20% and 30% | 75 | 46 | | Twelve states in which the urban | | population was between 10% and 20% | 87 | 62 | | Twelve states in which the urban | | population was between 0 and 10% | 95 | 67 ==========================================+============+==============