SANITARY IMPROVEMENT IN NEW YORE. 321 



city was made during the year. The city was divided into twenty- 

 nine sanitary districts, and to each district was assigned a com- 

 petent physician as sanitary inspector, to make a house-to-house 

 visitation, and to report upon every possible source of preventable 

 disease and every nuisance dangerous to life or detrimental to 

 health. The tenement-houses of the city were a special subject of 

 inspection, the inquiry extending to their cleanliness, ventilation, 

 drainage, and water-supply, the disposal of refuse, location and 

 care of water-closets, number of families and amount of air space, 

 cellar population, and the sickness and mortality. The work was 

 faithfully and intelligently accomplished, and in 18G5 the reports 

 of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health and of the sanitary 

 inspectors of districts were published in a large volume. These 

 reports were so startling in their disclosures, and the advent of 

 Asiatic cholera was at that time so imminent, that public atten- 

 tion was directed to the subject, and it was not difficult to secure 

 the enactment by the New York Legislature of 1866 of " an act 

 to create a Metropolitan Sanitary District and Board of Health 

 therein, for the preservation of health and life, and to prevent 

 the spread of disease." This act clearly defined the duties of the 

 Board of Health, and conferred upon it discretionary powers, judi- 

 cial and legislative, never before intrusted to any executive body 

 in this country. Under this law the Board of Health was organ- 

 ized in New York March 5, 1866, and on the 20th day of April it 

 enacted the necessary sanitary rules and regulations for the gov- 

 ernment of the city, since known as the Sanitary Code. 



To demonstrate the sanitary improvement in New York during 

 the quarter of a century that has elapsed since the organization 

 of the Board of Health in 1866, it is necessary to briefly describe 

 the sanitary condition of the city as it appeared to the Council of 

 Hygiene and its sanitary inspectors in 1861. They reported that 

 the death-rate was largely excessive by reason of the great mor- 

 tality from contagious and preventable diseases ; that the tene- 

 ment-houses of the city, especially those occupied by many fami- 

 lies, were overcrowded, unclean, badly lighted and ventilated, im- 

 perfectly drained, supplied with large open privies, which were 

 extremely filthy and offensive, causing discomfort and disease 

 among the tenants, and that the manifold evils of the tenement- 

 house system were intensified in many cases by rear houses in 

 close proximity to those fronting on the street ; that many dark, 

 damp, and unwholesome cellars were used as human habitations 

 and crowded with tenants and lodgers ; that most of the public 

 streets were paved with cobble-stone, out of repair and very im- 

 perfectly cleaned, and were a place of deposit for ashes and gar- 

 bage ; that a large part of the business of slaughtering animals 

 was conducted in the tenement-house districts in dilapidated build- 

 vol. xxsix. 23 



