Page 22 - 1925 November - To Dragma

102 TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

These are a few of the main items in the health budget.
They will practically guarantee happiness f o r later years and for
that reason i f f o r no other they are closely linked with the money
budget. As one works toward a goal in money so can one work
toward a goal in health. Prevention is far better than cure, just
as a nest egg is better than poverty.

The National Tuberculosis Association and affiliated associa-
tions believe that prevention of tuberculosis through the educa-
tion of men, women, and children has been a great cause for
more than cutting in half the death rate f r o m this disease during
the past twenty years. Their work is financed by the annual
sale of Christmas seals. You can help them in December by
buying seals. You can help them all through the year by keeping
a Health Budget.

Tuberculosis Christmas seals are again for sale on the candy
counters, cigar stands, and hotel desks of the country. Millions
of them, too, are pouring into our homes by mail, with the request
that we purchase the little stickers and so further strengthen the
campaign against one of the world's greatest scourges.

This year the Christmas seal comes of age. I t is just twenty-
one years since an obscure postal clerk in Denmark conceived the
idea of a decorative Christmas stamp to be placed on Christmas
mail as a means of raising funds f o r a hospital f o r tuberculosis
children. A few years later the first Christmas seals that were
sold in the United States raised $3,000 f o r the purchase o f a
sanatorium site in Delaware. Last year 1,250,000,000 seals were
printed for the National Tuberculosis Association and their sale
brought approximately $4,500,000 into the coffers of the fifteen
hundred organizations affiliated with the national body.

During these years the Christmas seal has helped to finance
hundreds of local, state, and national campaigns to secure hos-
pitals, sanatoria, clinics, and dispensaries. A t least twenty thou-
sand public health nurses are at work in the schools and homes to
educate children and parents in the rules of healthful living. I n
this way minor physical defects are detected, and because of early
treatment a physical breakdown in later life, caused by tubercu-
losis or some other serious disease, is often prevented. Every
large city nowadays has its open air schools, preventoria, and