RELATION OF THE LAW TO PUBLIC HEALTH 281 



comfort, such were the necessary incidents of life in a manufacturing 

 neighborhood. 



To constitute a nuisance, there must be a condition created or 

 maintained by man. A swamp may be pestilential, but no one is re- 

 sponsible for the natural condition of land. Swamps are the work of 

 nature and no matter how unhealthful they may be, any right to im- 

 prove them must be sought in statutes. 



In an early New York case the question arose whether at common 

 law there was any right to remove a person with smallpox to a 

 hospital. The court decided that if a man had smallpox, it was his 

 misfortune and not his fault, and therefore announced that a person in 

 his own house suffering from an infectious disease is not a nuisance. 



Nuisances are classified as private and public. They are private 

 when they affect private individuals. They are public when they inter- 

 fere with a common right, such as the right to use a public street, or 

 when they interfere with a considerable number of persons and thus 

 take on a public character. The two classes run into each other. A 

 public nuisance may be a private nuisance and frequently a private 

 nuisance which could with difficulty be proved to affect the public may 

 be ended by the enforcement of the private individual's right and thus 

 the individual in helping himself may confer a great benefit upon the 

 public in preventing the continuance of a dangerous condition. 



Nuisances may be classified also in accordance with the nature of the 

 injury done. Nuisances affecting health fall into two great classes. 

 First, the pollution of flowing water. Second, the escape of deleterious 

 things such as noise, smells, gases, disease germs, heat, electricity and 

 vibration. The law is very different as regards these two classes. 



One owning land along a stream is called a riparian owner and he 

 has a right to the flow of the water in such stream in its natural purity 

 undiminished, except by the ordinary domestic or agricultural uses of 

 upper owners. If the quantity is substantially diminished or if the 

 purity of the water is materially affected the lower owner may maintain 

 an action without reference to the question as to whether he has suffered 

 any actual damage or not. He may not have wished to use the water of 

 the stream at all, but he is none the less entitled to use it. A single 

 riparian owner then may be in a much stronger position to protect the 

 community from stream pollution than a board of health or the com- 

 munity as a whole. 



The commissioner of health of the state of New York has announced 

 as his battle cry, "The continued pollution of our streams and lakes 

 must stop." 



The practical effect of a private individual's action in preventing 

 pollution in contrast with the results of inaction by a community can 

 be shown in the following cases. The report of the New York State 



