| Pg 114
The question was how to begin to insure success.
After giving the matter considerable thought, I determined to go
straight to the people, to undertake a program of health education
to insure the people's support. We did not call it "health
education" those days.
Instead of laying down the law to the groups we
addressed, we explained what we were trying to do in the enforcement
of these new laws, to learn something of their problems as well
as our own, and how we might be mutually helpful. Results were encouraging.
Pg 125
Very early in my new career I became convinced that
public health education is of first importance to a complete public
health program. Burt to make it effective, officials must translate
scientific knowledge and public health facts into terms the average
person can understand, then explain in terms equally simple how
to apply this knowledge to every-day living. For ignorance and age-old
customs, habits and superstitions yield only when new desires and
ideals are created, that makes for clearer thinking and motivates
action in better habits of living. Acting on this belief, we launched
our health education program in July 1905, by issuing our monthly
Bulletin of the State Board of Health. The Bulletin was our most
important instrument in keeping the public informed of public health
problems of the state, and how and why we were trying to meet those
problems. Our mailing list included doctors, teachers, editors,
legislators, manufacturers and dealers in foods and drugs, leaders
of social and civic groups and any citizen who requested it.
Pg 153
However, still another type of nurse was needed
for public health work. In 1904 though, when I began my work with
the Kansas State Board of Health, we had no such nurses. We began
to train them in August 1909, when we employed Miss Laura Neiswenger,
a graduate nurse, to accompany our Traveling Tuberculosis Exhibit.
Her title was Visiting Nurse. But she was really our first public
health nurse as well as the first in the state.
Page 190
Though there were 26 cases of diphtheria and one
death there (Wabaunsee County) in 1922, the year following our first
immunization, that death was the last death from diphtheria of a
resident of Wabaunsee County since 1922, a period of 26 years. I
am inclined to believe that this is a record for a county of approximately
10,500 populations. This cooperation on a joint project with the
schools and the county government of Wabaunsee reminds me that from
the beginning in planning my work as Executive Officer, I sought
assistance from and cooperation with the University of Kansas and
the State College of Agriculture. In the beginning we needed their
support because we were doing pioneer work and they were established
institutions, so they lent authority to our efforts. Inconsequence
experts from these institutions were appointed advisory member of
the State Board of Health.
Page 195
If the federal health services could be made to
function on a cooperative basis too, the good they do would increase
and their cost decline, simply because the present system makes
for haphazard competition. Why should the various health services
of the federal government be scattered throughout the various departments
and bureaus, competing with one another, absurdly wasteful. In Kansas
we set a better standard.
Page 278
Dr. James A. Tobey tells us in his interesting and
instructive book, "Riders of the Plagues," that "The
glory that was Greece" was made possible by a universal system
of personal hygiene which included athletics, games, baths, swimming
and various forms of recreation, all compulsory on the youth of
Greece. This wise system, during several hundred years, produced
a superior physical and cultural race of people. And "The grandeur
that was Rome" was in the main, the product and the expression
of a marvelous system of personal hygiene and sanitation, which
included an unpolluted mountain water supply and a complete sewage
system, par of which is in use today. May we not properly assume
that "The Glory and Grandeur" that is Untied State, in
the physical, cultural and material progress of her people during
the past 100 years, are due, in no small measure to modern scientific
medicine and public health? And may I say that the professions of
medicine and public health are adventurous and satisfying ones,
too. Which should be attractive to American youth who have an ambition
to serve their country in a superlatively effective way.
Page 281
I began to realize, as I never had before, how much
the health of each one of us depends on the health of all of us.
But in my work for public health I came on another great fact, that
we doctors and public health workers can make progress but slowly
unless the public backs us up. This conclusion stares us in the
face today, for serious problems remain to be solved. To meet them,
we must prepare in time, all of us work together, a warning I cannot
repeat too often.
For more info on Dr. Crumbine, visit:
http://mph.kumc.edu/crumbine.html
http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1912/c3/crumbine_samuel_j.html
http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2006/11/18/kansas-the-flyswatter-state/
http://www.circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/92/10/2785
http://www.fpi.org/jahia/Jahia/pid/41
http://www.afdo.org/afdo/states/upload/2000%20Crumbine%20Report.pdf
http://www.afdo.org/afdo/states/upload/1999%20Crumbine%20Report.pdf
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