All these evils make it essential that we should be specially active on behalf of the protection of public health. Of course, in addition to the measures specifically classed under the head of hygiene, there are many other ways of carrying on the campaign against disease. For example, the solution of the housing problem is of immense importance. With the improvement of the workers’ dwellings, numerous foci of epidemic illness will be destroyed. No less important is labour protection. Everyone will understand how much depends upon the food supply, upon the nutritive circumstances of the population.
But attention to these matters will not relieve us from the necessity of undertaking special hygienic measures, which must be applied on the grand scale.
To-day, when we are in a very bad position as regards the most elementary requisites for a healthy life, we must grasp at every available means of assistance in our struggle with the evil. Hence arises the urgent need for a special department of social work, the urgent need for measures for the protection of public health.
136. The Nationalisation of medical Institutions.
Capitalist society had at its disposal a capitalistically organised system of medical work. Private hospitals and lunatic asylums, private health resorts, sanatoria, hydropathics, chemists’ shops, electrotherapeutic, radiotherapeutic, and various other curative institutions, were organised on a profit-making basis. The major proportion of these comprised places for the cure of obesity, gout, and other aristocratic complaints. They were, that is to say, intended for the cure of diseases peculiar to the dominant classes of capitalist society. Workers could not visit the fashionable health resorts, nor were there any working-class invalids in the sanatoria.