These facts, also the result of the conditions
outlined, were discovered by the city Bureau of Child Hygiene.
Another item in the sordid list is that of venereal disease. In his
pamphlet entitled "_The Venereal Diseases_," issued in 1918, Dr.
Hermann M. Biggs head of the New York State Department of Health
quoted authorities who gave estimates of the amount of syphilis and
gonorrhea in the United States. One says that 60 per cent of the men
contract one disease or the other at some time. Another said that 40
per cent of the population of New York City had syphilis, one of the
most terrible of all maladies. Poverty, delayed marriage,
prostitution--a brief and terrible chain accounts for this scourge.
Finally, there is tuberculosis, bred by bad housing conditions and
contributed to in frightful measure by poor food and unhealthy
surroundings during the hours of employment. Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman,
director of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of
Tuberculosis and foremost statistical authority upon tuberculosis in
the United States, says: "We know of 2,000,000 tubercular persons in
the United States."
Does this picture horrify the reader? This is not the whole truth.
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