32 Background of Work and Study in Public Health 



supplies to this disease. 5. Control of specific diseases, particularly small- 

 pox, yellow fever, and cholera. 6. Quarantine and disinfection. 7. Water 

 purification, street cleaning and scavenging. 



The first state to create a health board had been Massachusetts, 

 and its action appears to have been taken largely as a result of a 

 report of a sanitary survey made by Lemuel Shattuck and his 

 associates. The exemplary work of a short-lived health board under 

 Edv/in Chadwick v/as partly responsible for the curvey; and the 

 English influence was again revealed in 1876 when, within seven 

 years after its creation, the Massachusetts board placed before its 

 constituency a reprinting of a booklet by John Simon on Filth 

 Diseases and Their Prevention.^ Simon had been one of the first 

 municipal health officers of England. A medical officer of London 

 and the British government, he in 1878 had been honored with the 

 presidency of the Royal College of Surgeons, and for his accom- 

 plishments and other important writings on public health and 

 sanitation, he was knighted in 1887.^ 



Other states followed the example of Massachusetts. As early 

 as 1870, a state health board had been organized on the Pacific 

 coast in California. In 1872, among the southern states, Virginia 

 established a health board. Either just before or during 1872 or 

 1873 when Michigan did, Minnesota created a state health board. 

 The District of Columbia in 1871 had established such an official 

 agency, and in 1874 Maryland, and in 1875 Alabama, were added 

 to the list.-* 



Many years before, large municipalities had begun to organize 

 health departments. Near the turn of the century Baltimore 

 officials had been convinced of what might be accomplished by a 

 municipal health service and organized the nation's first city health 

 department. Others began to do likewise about two decades later: 

 Philadelphia (1818), Providence (1832), Cambridge, Massachu- 

 setts (1846), New York (1866), Chicago (1867), Louisville 

 (1870), Indianapolis (1872) and Boston (1873). Not until 

 1888 was a first diagnostic laboratory for the control of com- 

 municable diseases established. This was located in Providence, 

 Rhode Island, under the pioneering leadership of Dr. Charles 



* E. O. Jordan, G. C. Whipple, C.-E. A. Winslow, A pioneer of public health 

 William Thompson Sedgwick, 5-6 f ., New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1924. 

 ^ New International Encyclopedia 21: 121. 

 ' W. G. Smillie, op. cit., 15 f. 



