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Three California Writers:
Health Worth Education
by Samuel J. Rice
Edited by: Cindy Beck
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HEALTH WORTH EDUCATION
The Commissioner advocates extension of medical service, social
uplift. Commissioner Burke1 calls attention to
health problems affecting Indians and advocates an extensive policy
of health, education and social welfare work. “As the line
of progress advances, so do all people seek more and more to advance
themselves through appeals to al agencies that my offer protection
and contribute to their welfare.” The Indian should have the
best medical attention, which has been denied them; and so we hope
the Indian will get better medical attention, especially as to the
birth of Indian children. This should be and they have the
right to be well born. In the press, Dr. Oliver W. Holmes2
points out that more than a half time to begin the training of a
child is a hundred years before its birth. The best protection
that one can have against diseases is inherited vital energy,
manifesting itself in healthy organic cells that will repond to
every favoring force of habit, environment, education and training
that may encompass them, while at the same time offering stern
resistance to all inimical influences and factors that beset them.
The present administration of Indian affairs, says the Associated
Press, is seeking to discourage a perfunctionary response to duty,
and to foster a real, live, purposeful policy and determination of
restoring to a race its prestine [sic] health and virility by means
of the application of the laws of preventive medicine, operating
through education, social uplift, and constructive science, as
applied to nutrition, hygiene, and the relations of all the agencies
under control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of
future generations of Indians, either physically or mentally.
The Indian service intends to bring about gradual and promote
permanent improvement in the physical, mental, and moral nature of
every Indian. (The health of the Indian is serious, and
Indians should be rendering great service in a human way, and
following out their purposes.)
1. Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
2. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was named after
his father who was a poet, essayist, novelist, and professor of
anatomy. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt nominated
Holmes, Jr. for the Supreme Court of the United States. After 29
years of service on the bench, Justice Holmes retired at the age of
90, making him the oldest justice to have served on the Supreme
Court of the United States.
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