The discovery that the mosquito is the carrying agent for the yellow fever germ has saved more lives annually than were lost in the Cuban War. In the yellow fever epidemic of 1872, the loss to the country was not less than $100,000,000 in gold. “With our present population there are always about 3,000,000 persons in the United States on the sick list.... By means of Farr’s table, we may calculate that very close to a third, or 1,000,000 persons, are in the working period of life. Assuming that average earnings in the working period are $700, and that only three-fourths of the 1,000,000 potential workers would be occupied, we find over $500,000,000 as the minimum loss of earnings. “The cost of medical attendance, medicine and nursing, etc., is conjectured by Dr. Biggs in New York to be from $1.50 each per day for the consumptive poor to a greater amount for other diseases and classes. Applying this to the 3,000,000 years of illness annually experienced, we have $1,500,000,000 as the minimum annual cost of this kind. “The statistics of the Commissioner of Labor show that the expenditure for illness and death amounts to twenty-seven dollars per family per annum. This is for workingmen’s families only. But even this figure, if applied to the 17,000,000 families of the United States, would make the total bill caring for illness and death $460,000,000. The true cost may well be more than twice this sum. Certainly the estimate is more than safe, and is only one-third of the sum obtained by using Dr. Biggs’s estimate. The sum of the costs of illness, including loss of wages and cost of care, is thus $460,000,000 plus $500,000,000 equals $960,000,000.... At least three-quarters of the costs are preventable.”[3] [3] Report on National Vitality, p. 119. The cost of certain preventable diseases a year is estimated by various authorities as: Tuberculosis $1,000,000,000 Typhoid 250,000,000 Malaria 100,000,000 Other insect diseases 100,000,000 A hopeful sign of awakening is the endeavor by life insurance companies to bring home to the people the possibilities of race betterment. One company sends out among its policy holders trained nurses, who give plain talks on health subjects and offer practical suggestions as to hygienic living. This, to be sure, is on the economic basis of money saving, but if that is the only thing that will appeal to the people is it not wise to seize upon it as a lever to lift the standard of well-being? The possibility of saving the enormous sums that are lost by reason of premature deaths was an alluring subject to the insurance men. It gave to the world what, up to that time, it had lacked--a body of powerful men who recognized that they had a financial interest in preventing the needless death of men and women.