Part 3

“Quite right. You certainly ought to.” Something in his guest’s tone made Mr. Clyde suspicious. “What action would you suggest, then? he asked.

“A vote of confidence in your Health Officer.”

“You propose that we indorse the man who is responsible for a marked rise in our mortality figures?”

“Certainly.”

“In the name of all that’s absurd, why?”

“Let me answer that by another question. If disease appears in your household, do you want your doctor to conceal it or check it?”

Mr. Clyde took that under advisement. “You mean that this city has been concealing its diseases, and that Dr. Merritt, our new Health Officer, is only making known a condition which has always existed?” he asked presently.

“Haven’t you just told me so?”

“When did I tell you anything of the sort?” The younger man smiled. “That’s five questions in a row,” said he. “Time for an answer. You said that deaths from tuberculosis had increased twenty-five per cent since the new man came in.”

“Well?”

“You’re wrong. Tuberculosis doesn’t increase in sudden leaps. It isn’t an epidemic disease, rising and receding in waves. It’s endemic, a steady current.”

“But look at the figures. Figures don’t lie, do they?”

“Usually, in vital statistics,” was the imperturbable reply. “In this case, probably not. That is, they don’t lie to me. I’m afraid they do to you.” Mr. Clyde looked dubiously at the propounder of this curious suggestion and shook his head.

“Don’t get it?” queried Dr. Strong. “Perhaps you recall the saying of Thoreau—I think it the profoundest philosophical thought of the New World—that it takes two to tell the truth, one to speak and one to hear it.”

“You mean that we’ve misinterpreted the figures? Why, they’re as plain as two and two.”

“Truth lies behind figures, not in them,” said Dr. Strong. “Now, you’re worried because of a startling apparent swelling of the tuberculosis rate. When you find that sort of a sudden increase, it doesn’t signify that there’s more tuberculosis. It signifies only that there’s more knowledge of tuberculosis. You’re getting the disease more honestly reported; that’s all. Dr. Merritt—did you say his name is?—has stirred up your physicians to obey the law which requires that all deaths be promptly and properly reported, and all new cases of certain communicable diseases, as well. Speaking as a doctor, I should say that, with the exception of lawyers, there is no profession which considers itself above the law so widely as the medical profession. Therefore, your Health Officer has done something rather unusual in bringing the doctors to a sense of their duty. As for reporting, you can’t combat a disease until you know where it is established and whither it is spreading. So, I say, any health officer who succeeds in spurring up the medical profession, and in dragging the Great White Plague out of its lurking-places into the light of day ought to have a medal.”

“What about the other diseases? Is the same true of them?”

“Not to the same extent. No man can tell when or why the epidemic diseases—scarlet fever, measles, whooping-cough, and diphtheria—come and go. By the way, what about your diphtheria death rate here?”

“That is the exception to the rule. The rate is decreasing.”

Dr. Strong brought his hand down flat on the table with a force which made his cup jump in its saucer. “And your misnamed Public Health League proposes to take some action against the man who is shown, by every evidence you’ve suggested thus far, to be the right man in the right place!”

“How does the diphtheria rate show in his favor any more than the other death rates against him?”

“Because diphtheria is the one important disease which your medical officer can definitely control, and he seems to be doing it.”

“The only important one? Surely smallpox is controllable?”

“Smallpox is the poisoned arrow of the fool-killer. It is controllable; but it isn’t important, except to fools and anti-vaccination bigots.”

Mr. Thomas Clyde softly rubbed his cleanshaven chin, a sign and token with him that his mind was hard at work.

“You’re giving me a new view of a city in which I’ve lived for the first and last forty-five years of my life,” he said presently. “Are you familiar with conditions here?”

“Never have been here before, and have no reason to suppose that I shall ever return. Traveling at night is too much for me, so I stopped over to have a look at a town which has been rather notorious among public health officials for years.”

“Notorious!” repeated Mr. Clyde, his local pride up in arms.