pox, cholera, and plague are now being replaced by accidental injury and poisoning, and by the traumatic and radiation hazards of nuclear energy. The same machine age responsible through its advances in sanitation, immunization, chemotherapy and antibiotics for controlling the damage done by the toxic products generated by germs that caused epidemics has by similar advances posed new threats to life and health. Toxic products with results just as lethal as those elaborated by the bacteria causing plague are now synthesized by modern industry for household uses that result in making them available for use and for deadly misuse in almost every home. The same modern industry responsible for manufacturing millions of doses of vaccine almost overnight is now making millions of automobiles as well as thousands of airplanes, atom bombs, and other wholesale hazards to life and limb. During the last available report year (1950) there were 1,584 cases in which sufficient information was available so that the death certificate gave accidental poisoning by solid or liquid substances as the cause of death.' To this total one would be justified in adding several thousands of the 17,145 persons whose