“Better coddled citizens than dead children. Unless you give out free anti-toxin, physicians to families where every dollar counts will say, ‘Oh, it may not be diphtheria. We’ll wait and see, and maybe save the extra dollars.’ Diphtheria doesn’t wait. It strikes. Then there is the vitally important use of anti-toxin as a preventive. To render a whole family immune, where there is exposure from a known case of diphtheria, is expensive at the present rates, but is the most valuable expedient known. It is so much easier to prevent than to cure.” “All right; I give in. What else?” “Education, education, education; always education of the public, till the last flame is stamped out. Get the press, first; that is the most direct and far-reaching agency. Then organize public meetings, lectures, addresses in churches and Sunday schools, talks wherever you can get people together to listen. That is what I’d do.” “Go ahead and do it, then.” “Easily said,” smiled the Health Master. “Who am I, to practice what I preach?” “Provisional Health Officer of Worthington,” came the quick answer. “I have the Mayor’s assurance that he will appoint you to-morrow if you will take the job.” “I’ll do it,” said the Health Master, blinking a little with the suddenness of the announcement, but speaking unhesitatingly, “on two conditions: open schools and free anti-toxin.” “I’ll get that arranged with the Mayor. Meantime, you have unlimited leave of absence as Chinese physician to the Clyde household.” “But the Household Protective Association will have to back me,” said Dr. Strong, as the meeting broke up. “I can’t get along without you.” Swiftly and terribly moves an epidemic, once it has gained headway. And silence and concealment had fostered this onset from the first. Despite the best efforts of the new Health Officer, within a week the streets of the city were abloom with the malign flower of the scarlet for diphtheria and the yellow for measles. “First we must find out where we stand,” Dr. Strong told his subordinates; and, enlisting the services of the great body of physicians,—there is no other class of men so trained and inspired to altruistic public service as the medical profession,—he instituted a house-to-house search for hidden or undiscovered cases. From the best among his volunteers he chose a body of auxiliary school inspectors, one for every school, whom he held to their daily régime with military rigor. “But my patients are dying while I am looking after a roomful of healthy children,” objected one of them. “You can save twenty lives by early detection of the disease, in the time it takes to save one by treatment,” retorted the disciplinarian. “In war the individual must sometimes be sacrificed. And this is war.”