TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE. 321 



reported to the central authority in 1892, which proves that at 

 least sixteen hundred and thirty persons are not asleep. The sec- 

 retary wrote three thousand one hundred and fifty-three letters 

 on subjects ranging from glanders and leprosy to vital statistics. 



Says the secretary of Kentucky, "The growth of sanitary 

 work in public confidence has been very marked, especially in the 

 last three or four years." 



The capital of our country presents a very perfect object les- 

 son of what thorough sanitation is ; it formerly was bad, as bad 

 could be. . 



Progressive physicians early perceived the trend of preventive 

 medicine, and also the advantage of a free interchange of ideas, 

 and have now been formed into the American Public Health As- 

 sociation twenty-one years, through which Mexico, Canada, and 

 the United States form a sanitary solidarity. 



In 1879 the Sanitary Council of the Mississippi Valley was 

 formed, and the struggle that the Nestor of sanitarians. Dr. J. H. 

 Ranch, and Dr. Holt, had with the authorities of Louisiana to 

 prevent concealment and dissimulation makes a lively and interest- 

 ing story ; but for twelve years there has been practically no yel- 

 low fever in New Orleans (since 1880), and the commercial value 

 of the services of that council are immense, while there is no 

 measuring the confidence inspired in millions of minds, that they 

 will surely keep the fever or the cholera out. 



Incidentally the new profession of sanitary engineer has come 

 into being, and an immense amount of sanitary literature has ac- 

 cumulated. What of the future ? The best sign of the times we 

 have kept for the last : women are actually becoming interested 

 in practical sanitation, and large classes of them have paid money 

 to be instructed in it in Boston lately. The movement of these 

 public bodies is important but extraneous ; this feminine interest 

 is vital and interstitial, and under woman's influence we look to 

 see the physical life made doubly worth the living. 



A hundred years ago to-day Jenner alone knew the secret of 

 the means by which smallpox was to be virtually banished. Now 

 hundreds of people know the precise conditions under which a 

 successful crusade of extermination against consumption can be 

 conducted. Is it too much to hope that fifty years will see it 

 driven out from among civilized peoples ? 



Peof. Ctetjs Thomas, who has made special studies of the subject for several 

 years, has reached the conclusion that ancient Mexican civilization originated 

 with the Malays of the South Pacific islands, and believes that he has established 

 a connection between the languages of those tribes and that of the Mayas, show- 

 ing it to be a direct offshoot from them. 



VOL. XLVI. 24 



