310 THE POPVLAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the corruption of springs, wells, reservoirs, and aqueducts, the 

 sale of dangerous drugs, the sale of " swill milk " and watered 

 milk, the sale of unwholesome meat, the condition of tenement 

 and lodging houses, but say that " local and private interests 

 have, it is thought, often been strong enough to paralyze the 

 action of local health authorities " an opinion that was violently 

 confirmed a few years after, when they found themselves involved 

 in a lawsuit with a powerful firm who were corrupting the water 

 supply of a town with offal. It rendered a report to the Legis- 

 lature of 1870, when it had been at work only six months, and 

 had little of achievement to relate ; but in the lofty ideals it holds 

 up, and its catalogue of reasonable hopes for the future, though 

 only a pamphlet of fifty-eight pages, it remains to this day a good 

 sanitary bible for the earnest disciple. It would be amusing if it 

 were not painful to see how gingerly it walked, claiming only 

 " advisory " powers, it was by no means firm in the saddle and 

 dreaded lest some "watchdog of the treasury " should land it on 

 the ground. In the second year, an investigation was begun of 

 the possibilities of improvement in tenement houses, which it is 

 not too much to say has led up to the immense improvement in 

 that class of dwellings throughout the United States ; and in the 

 third year it was directed by an act of the Legislature on April 6, 

 1873, to "consider the general subject of the disposition of the 

 sewage of towns and cities and to report to the next Legislature 

 their views, with such information as they can obtain upon the 

 subject, from our own or other lands." This was the beginning 

 of the accurate study of a subject that has a personal interest for 

 every man, woman, and child. It has been prosecuted uninter- 

 ruptedly since, and at the end of nearly two decades, in 1890, it 

 put forth its monumental and authoritative three-volume report, 

 one of which relates to the general work of the board, one to 

 Purification of Sewage and Water, and one to Examination of 

 Water Supplies. Dr. Bowditch had said in 1869, "Public health 

 has so wide a field that help is needed from all from the chemist, 

 the engineer, the naturalist, and from the humblest citizen as well 

 as the highest statesman." He didn't mention the bacteriologist, 

 because that interesting personage did not exist. He was begin- 

 ning to be evolved in Pasteur, who was studying the " parasitic 

 diseases of silkworms," and in Tyndall, who was earnestly prob- 

 ing the truth or falsity of the doctrine of " spontaneous genera- 

 tion," but, as we now know many of him, he was non est. No less 

 than four chemists par excellence, one civil engineer, and one pro- 

 fessed biologist, outside the regular corps of medical and other 

 contributors, help to make this a work that puts this country in 

 advance of all Europe, and which will find a place in all scientific 

 libraries. 



