Editorial June 10, 1916 Issue

"Fear hath torment"

Archibald McLellan

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," runs an old saying, and it was never more aptly illustrated than in the fear-producing wisdom which is the outcome of the preventive campaign of enlightenment that has been waged so vigorously the last few years under the guise of the public good. Disease has been so persistently harped upon, compulsory examinations of children and adults have aroused so much fear, that the intended good to be accomplished thereby has become largely a negligible quantity. In other words, people have worried themselves sick over troubles which doubtless never would have materialized if their thought had not been dominated by the horrible presentations of disease constantly thrust upon them. Here and there the thinking public is awakening to the perniciousness of this practice, and in a recent editorial the Philadelphia Inquirer gives its readers some very pertinent observations as follows:—

The United States public health service is engaged in sending out all sorts of bulletins regarding health. The doctors have been telling us that the span of human life has been increasing. According to the health service it is not. That is to say, there is longer life among the young, but among those who are over forty-five the death rate is actually increasing. The doctors have been saving babies—or the mothers have because of better care—so that not so many of them die at a tender age, and once they get a start they live to become men in increasing numbers. But old, age is becoming rarer. The saving of life is at the beginning, not at the other end.

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