TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE. 307 



searching investigation. They were A. B. Palmer and C. L. Ford, 

 of the University of Michigan, and Pliny Earle, Superintendent 

 of the Northampton Insane Asylum, and after several months 

 their fearless and exhaustive report was published in the Boston 

 Medical and Surgical Journal and in pamphlet form. It created 

 a profound sensation ; but lest the proprietor of that school should 

 be thought a " sinner above all others," it should be recalled that 

 these were days prehistoric to sanitation, and that a bulky vol- 

 ume might be made up of the stories of epidemics caused by 

 unsanitary conditions connected with schools and colleges. The 

 man who had instigated the investigation was no enemy, but had 

 been friend, trustee, and patron of the school from its founda- 

 tion, but he was of the fiat-just itia-ruat- caelum type, and the find- 

 ings of the report, which proved that on those beautiful grounds, 

 and only there, save in the case of day pupils who had been sub- 

 jected to the same poison, was there any typhoid fever, sank deep 

 into his heart. We quote one of the closing sentences : " To 

 whatever extent the ignorance of sanitary laws may shield the 

 violator from moral responsibility, it will not abate the physical 

 penalty of such violation. This will fall with the same force 

 upon the unconscious, the ignorant, the helpless, and morally 

 innocent, as upon the intelligent, the powerful, and the wicked. 

 ... To prevent the poison of typhoid fever, when taken into the 

 system, from producing its legitimate effects, except by natural 

 agencies, would require as positive a miracle as to restore a 

 severed head, or arrest the course of the heavenly bodies. In- 

 stead of closing our eyes and soothing our minds by casting 

 the responsibility of a great calamity upon Providence, we should 

 look to the physical conditions producing it, and see if these con- 

 ditions are remediable." Some people thought these declarations 

 of the preventability of disease by human agency bordered on the 

 blasphemous, but the thought was " in the air." Dr. Budd, of 

 Bristol, in England, had traced epidemics of typhoid directly to 

 infected drinking water ; and Dr. Austin Flint's classical study of 

 the outbreak near Buffalo, N. Y., convinced medical men of its 

 preventability, as well as here and there a progressive layman, 

 but they all saw that only organized, concerted effort, fortified 

 by law, could effect this exemption. Mr. Plunkett was chosen to 

 the Legislature in 1868, and made some tentative efforts looking 

 to a State Board, but the time was not auspicious. He was again 

 a member in 1869, and in a faction fight in the dominant party 

 had been able to render the candidate who was finally seated as 

 Speaker an important service, and naturally the gentleman so 

 seated was " willing to oblige," etc. Among the members were 

 three physicians, and some other broad-minded progressive men ; 

 and rather late in the session, the motion was made to appoint a 



