The state does not assume the right to interfere with the acts of individuals so long as such acts affect only their own individual well-being, but when those actions affect others, then the police power of the state may be invoked. It is on this principle that the law prohibits suicide, assuming that no man can live or die without affecting the interests of other people. This is plainly so in the case of the head of a family or in the case of a man upon whom others are dependent and whose death removes their support and causes those supported to become dependent upon the state or county. This principle has been extended so as to include the cases where a method of living, a lack of care, or even a mere appearance in public may adversely affect the health of others in the same community. If, for example, a member of a family has diphtheria or smallpox, and such a child is isolated so that no danger of the spread of the disease exists, the state would not, in general, insist upon the use of any preventive or curative inoculation; but if a child with incipient diphtheria or whooping cough goes to school where other children may be infected and the disease spread, the state, acting through its Board of Education, would have a perfect right to send the child home and prevent its enjoying school privileges until recovery from the disease. It is on this principle that the state says that no child in New York State may attend school unless vaccinated, the law reading, "No child, not vaccinated, shall be admitted into any of the public schools of the state, and the trustees of the schools shall cause this provision of law to be enforced." This law has been questioned and brought before the Supreme Court for review, and it was held by the judges that the protection to the community implied is of sufficient importance to justify its enactment. For like reason, other restrictions governing the control of contagious diseases is a function of the police power of the state in which the rights of the individual must yield to the greater good of the community. The writer remembers a particularly malignant case of smallpox where the efforts of the local Board of Health had been concentrated on the enforcement of quarantine, and where by the aid of policemen, day and night, it was hoped that the disease was being confined in the one house; yet, after the death of the patient, and when apparently efforts for protection might be relaxed, a wake was held in the house, in the very room of the patient, which might have resulted in the spread of the disease through the entire town. Regulations, therefore, covering the conduct of funerals and of burials should be agreed to, since they are intended to prevent the spread of disease. _Self-interest the real basis of law._