The hygiene of the school child / by Lewis M. Terman.

  • Lewis Terman
Date:
[1913]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The hygiene of the school child / by Lewis M. Terman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    26/456 page 4
    specialists as to the ratio of preventability for these diseases, Professor Irving Fisher has reckoned that the general adoption of a few well-established hygienic principles would add fifteen years to the average span of human life. For the most part these fifteen lost years would be years of economic productivity. It is evident that every premature death entails an economic loss upon society, varying according to the age of the per- son dying. It is computed that the newborn child has an average money value of at least $95, The value increases to $960 by five years, to $4000 by twenty years, and drops again to $2900 by fifty years. The minimum average loss to society from each postpon- able death has been elaborately figured at $1700. Of the 1,500,000 deaths in the United States each year the combined opinion of the best medical authorities re- gards at least 42 per cent to be postponable, or 600,000. The annual loss to the country from this cause is there- fore $1700 X 600,000, or $1,070,000,000. Nor does this complete the story of waste. For each unnecessary death there are several cases of unneces- sary illness, the total cost of which, counting medical attendance and wages lost, amounts to nearly $1,000,- 000,000 more. The Great White Plague alone involves an annual loss of not less than $500,000,000. Typhoid fever costs us some $200,000,000; malaria, $100,000,- 000, besides its indirect injury in undermining health; and the hookworm disease an equal amount. It is esti- mated that there are from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 cases of malaria in the United States each year, and that
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3