RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 63 



petent hands. I cannot here dwell, as long as I should like to do, 

 upon the mutual relations of public health science and the sciences 

 of legislation and administration. Speaking of my own country 

 alone, I must confess that we are still very deficient in the applica- 

 tions of these sciences. We have not even a national board of health, 

 although we have, fortunately, in the Public Health and Marine 

 Hospital Service a strong substitute for one. The peculiarities of 

 our democratic and republican government have hitherto made it 

 impossible for the people of the United States to secure either from 

 federal authorities or from more local sources that measure of pater- 

 nal sanitary and hygienic protection which they ought to have, and 

 it is the duty of every American worker in this field to bend his 

 energies toward a better organization of the public health service 

 in every direction, municipal and state as well as national. The 

 appointment in 1886 of a distinguished hydraulic engineer to mem- 

 bership on the State Board of Health in Massachusetts marked an 

 epoch, so far as America is concerned, in both sanitary legislation 

 and administration. This appointment was a formal recognition 

 on the part of the public of the necessity of a larger proportion of 

 engineering science in matters relating to the public health, and the 

 results have justified the new procedure. It is now, fortunately, 

 becoming less rare in America to secure the services of engineers 

 upon such boards, and there can be no question that participation 

 of the expert laity with medical men is likely to be extended, 

 probably far beyond our present ideas. 



In a notable discourse before the International Medical Congress 

 at the Centennial Exposition held at Philadelphia in 1876, Dr. 

 Henry P. Bowditch, of Boston, one of the pioneers of hygiene and 

 sanitation in America, divided the century then closing, as to its 

 relation to public health science, into three periods, the first, from 

 1776 to 1832, a period of reliance upon authority and upon drugs; 

 the second, from 1832 to 1869, a period of true scientific observa- 

 tion; the third, from 1869 onwards, an epoch in which the medical 

 profession is aided by the laity and state hygiene is inaugurated. 

 Dr. Bowditch has much to say of the desirability of a wider cooper- 

 ation of the laity in state hygiene and remarks: "In all that tends 

 to the promotion of state hygiene hereafter the laity will naturally 

 and cordially cooperate with the [medical] profession." The history 

 of public health science shows Dr. Bowditch's prediction to have 

 been well grounded. The names of John Howard and Captain Cook 

 in the eighteenth century, and of Edwin Chadwick, John Simon, 

 and Louis Pasteur (not to mention a host of lesser workers) in the 

 nineteenth century, show conclusively that public health science 

 has been, even from the start, by no means confined to medical 

 men. We may go further and say that even when forwarded by 



