PrHPAKAIORV K) RrSHARCII CARliliR 33 



Value Chapin. He, after serving in 1879-1880 as house physician 

 of Bellcvuc Hospital in New York City, had become in 1884 

 superintendent of health at Providence and in 1886 professor of 

 physiology at Brown University. New York also a few years later 

 established such a laboratory under Dr. Hermann Biggs, a " states- 

 man of public health"" as well as physician and an outstanding 

 leader in the American movement. 



Sometime around the year 1870 health boards had begun to 

 require the reporting of the more important contagious diseases. 

 At first, primarily administrative agencies, these boards had to 

 , spend much time educating a disbelieving public in the practical 

 values of sanitary science; and for the purpose often authentic 

 statistics concerning diseases and epidemics had to be acquired. 

 Often their rules and regulations required the passing of laws to 

 secure their enforcement, and frequently hostility to the measures 

 was encountered. With the advancement of modern preventive 

 medicine and the practical introduction of vaccines and antitoxins 

 against human and animal diseases, their task in public education 

 became less difficult. But their official duties were greatly ex- 

 panded. "Environmental sanitation," W. G. Smillie says,® "be- 

 came a secondary activity of the health department, and control of 

 communicable disease a major function." Public confidence in the 

 work of the health boards increased as their successful conquests 

 of disease began to outnumber their failures. 



The forces of public hygiene and preventive medicine united 

 efforts, and as early as 1879 a National Board of Health was 

 organized. This lasted but a few years. Yet its discontinuance did 

 not undermine the American Public Health Association. It became 

 the leading national organization in public health matters. Dr. 

 Smillie suggests' two reasons why the health board failed: its 

 inherent weakness, but mainly that " the country as a whole was 

 not yet ready for a nation-wide health promotion service." 



The humanitarian phase of the movement in which Erwin Smith 

 first became interested was that directed toward improving hy- 

 genic conditions within prisons. For more than a century in 

 several European countries, notably England, reforms had been 



" Charles Edward Amory Winslow, The life of Hermann M. Biggs Ai. D,. D. Sc, 

 LL. D., with bibliography, Phila., Lea and Febiger, 1929. 

 " Op. cit., 18-19. 

 '' Op. cit., 19. 



