TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE. 319 



that led to the abolition of the board. Nashville, Tenn., in 1878, 

 made enlightened preparations under the leadership of Dr. J. D. 

 Plunket,* and, though there were twenty-four cases, either coming 

 from other places or originating there, they were restricted, cared 

 for in a hospital made ready, and the business of the city went on 

 with no interruption ; but there was concentrated authority at the 

 center of things. 



The large southern and western States each of which is a 

 sort of empire have organized their work largely by counties, 

 each of which has a board that reports to the central State Board, 

 and they are doing a valuable work in the collection and collation 

 of vital statistics a work in which our country lags far behind 

 European lands. Should our Congress see fit to create the Bureau 

 of Public Health within the Department of the Interior, now 

 asked for by the New York Academy of Medicine, and all sensible 

 sanitary bodies everywhere, it would be bringing our country into 

 step with other progressive peoples. Dr. Abbott, of Massachusetts, 

 made a plea before the Sanitary Congress at Chicago for a national 

 registration. Is not a numbering of the people, and an account of 

 their sicknesses and deaths, of as much importance as the acreage 

 of wheat or corn, and the number of acres that have been de- 

 stroyed by weevils or fungi ? It would seem that a central au- 

 thority can better fence out those contagious diseases that pay 

 no attention to State lines, than one diffused among a number 

 of organizations, even though each one has its inalienable State 

 rights. 



The scientific and safe sanitation of the Columbian Fair 

 grounds in Chicago, and the direct reduction of the typhoid-fever 

 rate there from the hour when water from the contaminated in- 

 takes was shut off, and the new four-mile tunnel began to be used, 

 is a distinct triumph of the science of sanitation. 



The thirty-seven boards have very different phases of sanitary 

 and hygienic errors brought to their attention, and naturally each 

 attacks the evil that is most importunate in his section, and the 

 result is that there is no detail of the house its site, its material, 

 construction, plumbing, heating, lighting, or ventilation that is 

 not exhaustively discussed by some competent mind ; nothing 

 pertaining to the hygiene of the individual escapes them, from 

 protecting the newly born from blindness, up through all the 

 perils of youth, middle life, and age, till at last he finds sanitary 

 sepulture at the hands of a funeral director who has been care- 

 fully taught by his State board how to conduct the entombment 

 of those who have died of the most virulent infections with per- 

 fect safety to the living. The frauds and adulterations in foods 



* No connection of the writer, and spells his name differently. 



