Civic improvement; Urban women; Women in public life
Another example of effective and direct tuberculosis work is afforded by
the Association of Tuberculosis Clinics of New York City which includes
women on its board of directors and has, for its executive secretary,
Miss F. Elizabeth Crowell. The importance of an association like this
lies in its ideals for prevention and in its stimulation to the
individual clinics composing its membership to increase their work among
children and their family care. It is of comparatively little use to
treat a single adult in a family and neglect the other members. Children
may inherit the tendency to the disease or be infected before the adult
member appears for treatment or the family’s mode of living may create
the same disease for all its members. It is therefore very direct and
effective work to make family care the basis of prevention. Partly as a
result of the conferences held by this Association, “the Department of
Health has enlarged and strengthened its clinical work, has reorganized
its system of registration and has increased both the quantity and
quality of its nursing service.”
In various ways, women have sought to control the spread of this dread
disease. They did much to abolish the common drinking cup and have
worked for the establishment of sanitary drinking fountains in public
squares and sanitary faucets in public schools and public buildings.
They have agitated against spitting in public places, and have seen
their agitations rewarded with anti-spitting ordinances; and they have
organized junior and other leagues to help with their enforcement. They
have pressed upon the attention of the authorities the necessity for
medical inspection in the schools and for open-air schools; and Mrs.
Vanderbilt of New York has built some splendid open-air homes for
tuberculous patients, which have served as models for later attempts to
deal with the housing requirements for the permanent cure of
tuberculosis.
Testimonials to the initiation and pressure by women along these lines,
all of which are of the utmost importance in checking the ravages of
tuberculosis, come from all quarters.
The Buffalo Federation of Clubs, the organized women of Minneapolis, the
Women’s Municipal League of Boston, and the Civic Club of Allegheny
County, Pennsylvania, are among the groups that have insisted upon
open-air schools for children either infected with the germs of
tuberculosis or so anæmic that they might readily fall a prey to
infection.
Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, superintendent of schools in Chicago, brought the
open-air idea into the ordinary schools by seeing that properly devised
window boards were installed so that school children might regularly
study with open windows. This makes possible the wide extension of
preventive health work, and her scheme is being extended to other
cities.
OCCUPATIONAL DISEASES
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