758 DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 



various towns and villages of the State, in the interests of sanitary re- 

 form. It was after one of these trips, in November, 1877, that the 

 North Adams Transcript published a long editorial, impressive with 

 figures and with facts, the opening paragraphs of which here follow. 



"As stated in a previous issue, Dr. Charles F. Folsom, Secretary of 

 the State Board of Health, recently visited our village for the purpose 

 of making a thorough investigation into its sanitary condition. For the 

 limited time which he spent here, his work was been remarkably thor- 

 ough, and the results of his examination, which we publish in full, are 

 of a nature calculated to startle our citizens and awaken a profound in- 

 terest in an important and heretofore neglected subject." 



The investigations with which Dr. Folsom became especially iden- 

 tified (besides the question of meat-supply, above referred to) in the 

 five years that followed his appointment, related to water-supply and 

 the disposal of sewage, vital statistics, and his old love, — diseases of the 

 mind. On these vast problems he made himself an expert, so far as this 

 could be done without actual laboratory work. For this he was not 

 trained, but what he did and what his mental constitution admirably 

 fitted him to do was to scrutinize and estimate and contrast and after- 

 ward to summarize the work of other men, in Europe and -\t home, and 

 then intelligently to form a plan suited for Massachusetts and for 

 Boston. One reason why the work of the State Board at the period of 

 Dr. Folsom's service was so largely given up to questions of water- 

 supply and drainage and the disposal of sewage was that these subjects 

 had begun to attract the public interest in a high degree. This led 

 to legislation by the State authorities and permission to employ experts, 

 the results of whose investigations are given in the successive annual 

 reports. In these inquiries the City of Boston took an active part, and 

 the problem of its sewerage was studied in 1875-1876 by a special 

 commission, consisting of E. S. Cheesborough and Moses Lane as 

 representing the department of civil engineering, and Dr. Folsom as 

 standing for the interests of the public health. This commission was 

 appointed by the city government in February, 1875, only a few months 

 after the nomination of Dr. Folsom to the position of Secretary to the 

 State Board of Health, and the choice of him as a member may there- 

 fore be considered as a recognition of his merits. The commission was 

 called on to consider, one by one, a series of important practical prob- 

 lems relating to the sewerage system of the city and the modes by which 

 it could be bettered. One portion of the investigation consisted in a 

 study of the methods of dealing with the sewage-waste adopted in other 

 cities of America and Europe and the experiments in utilizing it through 

 irrigation-farms. The investigation of these matters necessitated an- 



