254 A Retrospect in Biochemistry [Dec. 



In 1870 an elaborate research was made on the subject of the 

 elimination of nitrogen under protracted muscular exercise. The 

 long-distance walker Edward Payson Weston put himself under 

 medical Observation for five days prior, five days during and five 

 days after a walk in which he covered three hundred and seventeen 

 and a half miles out of the four hundred he expected to walk. 

 An increase in the elimination was observed, results subsequently 

 confirmed on the same individual abroad. He has, in his seventies, 

 walked twice across the continent, from east to west and again 

 from west to east. 



In 1864 the Citizen's Association requested the medical pro- 

 fession to inform it of the sanitary condition of New York. The 

 Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health was made in 

 1865. This was the first concerted action relating to such matters, 

 and as a result the Health Department was subsequently organized 

 and its work has grown to vast dimensions. 



During the Civil War but two disinfectants were in common 

 use — Chloride of lime and potassium permanganate. Professor 

 Alpheus B. Crosby, of the Bellevue Hospital staff, in a discourse 

 "On a Lost Art in Surgery, Cleanliness," teils of the successful 

 disinfection of the hospital by the use of three tons of chlorine gas 

 generated in the wards, to abate serious infection from puerperal 

 fever and septicemia. Present antiseptic methods were dawning. 



There were attempts to regulate the purity of water supplies, 

 and of food, but a long, very long campaign of education, the ad- 

 justment of Interstate conditions and many other hindrances had 

 to be overcome before even the present laws could be enacted and 

 enforced. 



No attempt has been made to more than note the phenomenal 

 changes which took place in our educational System about 1880, 

 when things educational shot up, as children sometimes take to 

 growing. Inadvertently perhaps, someone administered a dose of 

 extract of the pituitary body. At any rate the high schools, Col- 

 leges, and universities became capable of preparing the Student of 

 medicine in chemistry so that the new courses in bacteriology and 

 pathology could be better understood. 



The field of view has not been extended to take in the whole 



