THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1923 HEALTH WEEK.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18987, 8 October 1923, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1923 HEALTH WEEK.

The proceedings in connection with the Health Week, which is likely to become an annual institution in Dunedin, will start this morning at Burns Hall, which will be the central locale of the enterprise. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that they started yesterday, when appropriate and encouraging allusions were made in many of the city churches and Sunday schools. This latter prelude to the secular demonstrations deserves notice, because it is upon the rising generation that influences of social uplift can be most profitably exercised. "We are glad, therefore, to note that the attention of pupils in the primary and secondary schools is to be specially directed to what may he termed the question of the hour. The local effort has just been preceded by a Health Week in Wellington, which appears to have been quite successful in so far as results in such matters can be quickly perceptible, and it immediately synchronises with a similar exhibition in the Home Country. On the whole the auspices for the Week seem to be distinctly favourable. The promoters of the undertaking, co-operating in an unselfish crusading spirit, so to speak, have taken considerable pains over the preliminary arrangements; and the most cursory perusal of the programme discloses its comprehensive and practical qualities. It is true that expectations should not he too optimistically conceived. The first Dunedin Health Week is not likely to be attended by a great wave of popular enthusiasm. Many deaf ears will he turned to tho organised appeal for a quickened appreciation of the claims of public and personal hygiene; and the worst is that tho people whose minds and habits it is most necessary to influence are those whose attention is most difficult to arrest. This circumstance, however, is characteristic of most crusades; and in the present instance there is ample ground for hoping that the negligent and irresponsible sections of the community wall gradually be embraced within the pervasive atmosphere of an improved public sentiment. Our initial Health Week will not represent lost labour if only a few scores of more or less feckless folk can he indoctrinated with the primary principles of sanative care and foresight. The focussing of thought upon hygienic questions for several days should serve to further the development of a communal conscience in relation to the sacred duty, as it may justly be termed, of promoting individual and corporate salubrity. Healthiness tends to comeliness in the largest sense of the word,— not least to that general civic comeliness and well-being which should be an ideal of ail conscientious citizens, and which is obviously incompatible with sordid and distasteful conditions of amv kind. And in this connection it must not be forgotten that the municipal authorities have a very definite and farreaching responsibility. It is idle tc preach to lax individuals if the leaders or representatives of the people are lax themselves in initiating and executing desirable policies. We make no harsh imputations, and the active support which is being given by the City Corporation to the Health Week enterprise has to be cordially recognised; but we feel constrained to suggest the question whether the civic conditions in Dunedin, as regards the distribution of food (milk, bread, meat), the removal of dust and refuse, and one or two other matters, compare favourably, we will not say with conditions in some model towns in America and England, but with those obtaining in certain other parts of New Zealand. Why. is it, by the way, that prowling predatory dogs, with their disgusting contaminations, virtually unknown in all the cleanest cities, are so putridly common here ? Health Week may, and certainly should, lead to shrewd searchings of heart in various local quarters, both individual and corporate.