238 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



be made. Here the state can render valuable assistance and maintain 

 laboratories for the benefit of municipalities which can not have them. 



In addition to the measures of prevention and suppression which 

 have been mentioned reference should be made to the preparation and 

 distribution of antitoxin by boards of health. Here we have an appli- 

 cation of the laboratory principle applied to the production of a remedy 

 rather than to the discovery of the cause of disease. Antitoxin is a 

 curative measure which may be and is applied more often than not to 

 isolated cases of diphtheria. The beneficent results which have fol- 

 lowed the use of this agent in combating one of the most common and 

 fatal of household diseases are unquestioned, but it must not be for- 

 gotten that in supplying antitoxin without charge, boards of health lay 

 themselves open to the charge of competing with private manufactories 

 which prepare the same product and are presumably in a legitimate 

 business to make money. 



Eesults seem to show that it is desirable for boards of health to 

 supply antitoxin, but the principle involved is an interesting one. If 

 antitoxin is to be supplied gratis by boards of health, should not those 

 boards also supply disinfectants, concerning which there are no greater 

 frauds in the American markets to-day? And if antitoxin and disin- 

 fectants, why not other things such as indispensable articles of clothing ? 



To enumerate all the functions of boards of health, local and state, 

 would far surpass the necessary limits of this paper, but enough has 

 been said to show warrant for endorsing most of the work being done 

 to approve the extension of some and the limitation of others of the 

 ever-growing activities of health bureaus. A long paper could be 

 written on any of a dozen phases of this subject. 



Taking a rapid review of the subjects covered here, we may remark 

 first that boards of health have ample power. The standards of public 

 health and municipal hygiene are continually growing higher. 



The dangers from disease in gross epidemic form are becoming less 

 and less, and in their place a new set of hygienic standards is being 

 erected. Some of these new standards verge upon the realm of 

 esthetics. To what extent boards of health are right in extending their 

 efforts to improve municipal conditions which bear remotely, if at all, 

 on disease and death, but undoubtedly affect public comfort, is a ques- 

 tion for debate. 



To be effective health work must be cooperative. Statistics must 

 be promptly and accurately collected by the ultimate units of sanitary 

 authority, municipal health boards, and transmitted to boards having 

 jurisdiction over larger territory. Whether or not the largest unit of 

 health control sliould be the state or the nation is a question which this 

 paper need not discuss. It is to be remembered in this connection, 

 however, that state boundaries are only imaginary lines and that some 



