No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 213 



least labor and expenditure to himself. Under such conditions, it 

 does not require a very long period to produce so poisonous a con- 

 dition of the soil, water and air that disease is recognized as the 

 result of these uncivilized methods. The North American Indians 

 had a very simple plan for meeting an emergency of this kind. 

 Their medicine-man held a pow-wow and declared that the Great 

 Spirit had cursed the ground on which they were encamped, and 

 ordered them to abandon it. This they did with little ado. Strap- 

 ping their wigwams on the backs of their ponies, and their house- 

 hold effects on the backs of their wives, the braves marched off in 

 search of a site for a new village. In so-called civilized communi- 

 ties, however, habitations and commercial buildings are not so 

 easily transported and possess too great a money value to permit 

 them to be lightly abandoned. The alternative is the establish- 

 ment of local self-government of the form known as municipal, 

 and the appointment of a special authority to which this most im- 

 portant "nobody's business" shall be assigned. Such authorities 

 discharge their duties with more or less efficiency, usually, unfor 

 tunately, it must be admitted, less, inasmuch as, first, selfishness 

 and self-interest cannot be entirely eradicated by an act of incor- 

 poration; and, secondly, as communities are invariably unwilling 

 to provide their health authorities with sufficient money to prop- 

 erly carry out the measures necessary for the prevention of dis- 

 ease. Moreover, in small communities, the underpaid officials do 

 not possess the knowledge or training necessary to enable them to 

 recognize and efficiently combat the causes of disease. Hence, as 

 individual families, when crowded into a small space, become the 

 cause of injury or "nuisance," as it is technically called, to one 

 another, so villages and towns, as they multiply, become nuisances 

 to neighboring towns. 



The necessity for a central health authority which shall, first, 

 instruct local boards in their duties, secondly, ensure greater effici- 

 ency in their administration, and, thirdly, aid the Legislature of the 

 State in framing proper laws for the better protection of the public 

 health and the prevention of disease, uniform in their action through- 

 out the entire body politic, therefore, becomes apparent. Singu- 

 larly enough, this conclusion was not arrived at until the latter 

 half of the last century. The phrase "State Medicine" is compara- 

 tively a new one. It is used to describe a combination of the study 

 of the causes of diseases and of the means for their prevention 

 with that of the appropriate methods of official administration 

 for the enforcement of those means. In different countries the 

 official administration assumes different forms. In Encrland, the 

 central authority is the local government board, to which all local 

 health boards must report and to whose rulings they are amenable. 



