hospitals, drugs and instruments, etc.). In so far as the Communist Party is able to intervene actively in public health work, there are three main provinces for such activity.
The first essential is the resolute enforcement of broadly conceived sanitary measures. Attention must be given to the sanitary condition of all places of public resort. Many epidemics arise from the contamination of the water supply, from badly kept street gullies and storm-water pipes, middens and manure heaps, cesspools, closets, and so forth. The protection of earth, air, and water is the first requisite for public health. To the same category of measures belongs the organisation of communal kitchens and of the food supply generally upon a scientific and hygienic foundation. Owing to the scarcity of provisions, this task has hitherto been extremely difficult to fulfil; but it is already within our competence to ensure that the food shall be hygienically prepared in the communal kitchens, the children’s kitchens, the hospitals, and all other public institutions. It is further necessary to organise measures to prevent the spread of epidemic diseases of a contagious character. This will be secured by the sanitary inspection of institutions, private houses, and schools; by the filtration of water, by the organisation of depots for the provision of boiled water, by disinfection, by the obligatory sterilisation of wearing apparel, etc.
The second essential is that there should be a carefully planned campaign against the so-called social diseases, that is to say against those diseases which affect masses of people and are brought about by social causes. Three diseases, above all, come within this category. First, tuberculosis, which is dependent upon bad working conditions. Secondly, venereal disease, whose present wide diffusion is mainly the outcome of the war. Thirdly, alcoholism: this partly arises from brutalisation, depression, and sordid surroundings; and it is partly due to parasitic degeneration. These diseases do not merely concern the adults who, suffer from them; they exercise a disastrous influence upon the offspring. Humanity is gravely