3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



committee to inquire into the expediency of establishing a Board 

 of Health. The man who made the motion was placed at its 

 head, and the kindly disposed Speaker desired him to name his 

 associates ; he designated those to whom the cause would appeal. 

 Word was sent to Dr. Bowditch and his fellow-sanitarians to 

 come and present their reasons. A bill was drawn, but its cham- 

 pion did not care to have it discussed till late in the session, when 

 many of the timid obstructionists would have hied themselves to 

 their rural farms ; and when speaking in its advocacy, he ignored 

 the wails of the bereaved fathers and mothers of the Maplewood 

 pupils, and based his plea entirely on economic grounds, saying 

 that by the aid of law preventable diseases might be checked; 

 that it had been shown that typhoid fever was a preventable dis- 

 ease. He called attention to the fact that it generally attacked 

 persons in the productive age, and that scarcely one of the three 

 hundred and thirty-five towns in the State but had at least one 

 annual victim. He said a man of twenty-one represented an in- 

 vestment of ten thousand dollars ; that it had cost at least five 

 hundred dollars each year of somebody's money public or pri- 

 vate to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate him ; and thus the State 

 sustained an annual loss of five million three hundred and fifty 

 thousand dollars. 



It seems humiliating that the issues of life and death should 

 be made to hinge on a pocket argument, but it was effective, and 

 the law establishing a State Board of Health was enacted June 

 21, 1869. The members were to be appointed by the Governor 

 and Council. The act was not twenty-four hours old before an 

 application from an unprogressive doctor- constituent came to its 

 champion for a position. The Governor said, " I suppose you 

 have some friends you would like to see on the board ? *' " No," 

 was the answer, " only I think it goes without saying who should 

 be at its head Dr. H. I. Bowditch, who has worked disinter- 

 estedly for so many years toward this consummation ; for the 

 rest, all I ask is that you will not make it worthless by appoint- 

 ing a set of nobodies, on account of their political opinions." The 

 Governor rose to the occasion ; the pace he set has never been 

 lost, and in the twenty-five years of its existence many of the 

 ablest men in the Commonwealth have lent their powers to make 

 it a success. The action of the member from the " western county " 

 may be compared to that of the man who turns the jet and 

 applies the match, thus setting the already waiting illuminant 

 alight a small but very indispensable operation. There are now 

 thirty-six State Boards patterned very closely after this, under 

 whose guidance a whole army of sanitarians is at work. 



" Its banner bears the sinjile line, 

 ' Our duty is to save.' " 



