THE RELATIONS OF PUBLIC HEALTH SCIENCE TO 



OTHER SCIENCES 



BY WILLIAM THOMPSON SEDGWICK 



[William Thompson Sedgwick, Professor of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology, b. West Hartford, Connecticut, December 29, 1855. Ph.B. 

 Sheffield Scientific School, 1877; Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University, 1881; 

 Fellow, ibid. 1879-80. Instructor in Physiological Chemistry, Sheffield Scien- 

 tific School, 1878-79; Instructor and Associate in Biology, Johns Hopkins, 1880- 

 83; Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor in Biology, Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology, 1883; Biologist of Massachusetts State Board 

 of Health, 1888-96; Curator of Lowell Institute, Boston, 1879. Member of 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society of American 

 Bacteriologists, American Public Health Associations, American Society of 

 Naturalists, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Author of General 

 Biology (joint author); Life and Letters of William Barton Rogers (assistant 

 editor) ; Principles of Sanitary Science and Public Health; The Human Mech- 

 anism (joint author).] 



"Physical science is one and indivisible. Although for practical purposes, 

 it is convenient to mark it out into the primary regions of physics, chemistry, 

 and biology, and to subdivide these into subordinate provinces, yet the method 

 of investigation and the ultimate object of the physical inquirer are everywhere 

 the same." HUXLEY. 



PHYSICAL SCIENCE is one and indivisible; that, as I understand 

 it, is the keynote of this great Congress, of which public health 

 science forms one section, and as I am invited to consider, in the 

 brief space of forty-five minutes, the relations of public health 

 science to other sciences, I shall take the liberty of selecting from 

 the whole number of " other sciences " only a few, the relations of 

 which to public health science seem to me for one reason or another 

 especially important at the present time. I accept the term public 

 health science without hesitation, for any division of human know- 

 ledge which has worked out its own laws with strict adherence to 

 the rules of inductive and deductive reasoning, as public health 

 science has done, and which has reached results enabling it to pre- 

 dict with accuracy, as public health science can now predict, is 

 entitled to a place and an honorable place among the physical sciences. 



Public health science had its rise and a considerable development 

 in the eighteenth century. Before that time numerous procedures 

 tending to protect or promote the public health had, indeed, at one 

 time or another existed, but these were largely empirical and quite 

 as often directed to the convenience of mankind as to their sanitary 

 safety. In this class belong the Mosaic code; the water-supply 

 introduced into Jerusalem by Hezekiah; the sanitary engineering 

 of Empedocles; the Cloaca Maxima, the water-supplies of ancient 

 Mycenae and of Rome, and all the earlier, and too often futile, 

 forms of quarantine. Even the art of inoculation for small-pox 

 was only an ingenious knack introduced from the East, where it 



