I lay special stress on the provision of skilled medical advice and treatment, and of nursing assistance at the public expense, which at present are sorely deficient for the vast majority of the population, and perhaps for none more so than for the less well-to-do people who receive salaries and not weekly wages. This assistance possesses the special advantage previously pointed out, that it does not tend to create a demand for further assistance, when such assistance is not required. The greatest bulk of poverty is due directly to sickness. A vast mass of sickness still occurs, which is not owing to lack of family or communal means, but is due to ignorance or neglect on the part of the individual, of the responsible owners of houses, of the employers of work-people, and still more of the members of local authorities or state legislatures. Typhoid fever still commonly prevails as the result of neglected sanitation; hookworm disease still causes incapacity of hundreds of thousands for the same reason; malaria, still one of the greatest scourges of humanity, might be reduced to a fraction of its present amount if each community and each person would carry out available simple preventive measures; tuberculosis is still spread throughout every civilized community chiefly because indiscriminate expectoration is unregulated, and satisfactory and acceptable hospital treatment is not provided for all those who need it. And so we continue to allow avoidable poverty to be perpetuated, and to impose not only on the sick poor themselves, but also on the efficient and solvent part of the community a heavy burden, the removal of which would, to an almost incredible extent, increase the general happiness of mankind.