Excerpt from The Health Bulletin, 1930, Vol. 45

Facing a new year is an adventure for every living human being from the infant in its crib to the individual who has marked off three score and ten years. For many of the infants, too many of them, the journey will be perilous. For many of the aged it will mean embarkation on the "Third Puzzle" of human existence. Accidents and untimely deaths, most of which are preventable, will take heavy toll among the intervening ages. The same history is recorded year after year.

It is the business of a health department to make the traveling of the infants less hazardous, to reduce the preventable toll taken from those of active age, and to defer the embarkation of those of advanced years as long as possible.

The practical question is, how may these things be done? The equally practical answer is, by efficiency, honesty and industry on the part of health department personnel, county, city, and state, in vigorously teaching the people how to apply the scientific principles of disease and accident prevention.

We herewith set forth some of the things that might be done.

Every prospective bride and groom might be taught the dangers of venereal disease with the disastrous consequences which so often follow such infection. Every prospective mother should receive expert care and advice during the entire pre-natal period. She should have the proper kind of food in adequate quantity. Any abnormal condition manifesting itself should have immediate medical attention. During the birth process every needful attention should be available. Thus the maternal dangers may be largely eliminated. The infant then, given a healthy heritage free from venereal infection, may have at least an even start. Every infant born should have right from its first hour the inalienable right of nourishment from its mother's breast, unless a competent physician certifies that breast feeding would be dangerous for the mother and disastrous for the infant. Soap is cheap and water, fresh air and sunlight in North Carolina is practically unlimited the year round. The baby should, therefore, have a clean bed, regardless of rags or poverty (the rags can be clean ones), mother's milk, sunlight and clean air. The male relative with pipe or cigar, or the mother with cigarette, should be equally barred from the baby's presence as the visitor with a cold. Give the baby air free from the germs of respiratory infection, the irritating effects of nicotine loaded smoke, good breast milk, a clean bed, good heritage from healthy parents, let it alone and the chances are better than even the baby will do the rest for the first eight or nine months of life. Careful attention to the establishment of health habits with assurance of right kind of food, frequent inspection by the family physician and dentist will take care of the pre-school period and ensure the presentation of a healthy young animal to the school at the ripe and experienced age of six. These first six years are the important ones.

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