ClIAl'lIlv 11 



BACKGROUND OF WORK AND STUDY IN PUBLIC HEALTH, HYGIENE, 



AND SANITATION, PATHOLOGY AND BACTERIOLOGY, PREPARATORY 



FOR RESEARCH CAREER IN THE PLANT SCIENCES. 



MICHIGAN was among the first states to create a Board of 

 Health. Its Roard was established in the early 1870's, and 

 its Secretary, Dr. Henry B. Baker, was for many years a leader 

 (5f the movement for public hygiene and sanitation within the 

 state and nation. For a decade a national movement to improve 

 public health had been gaining strength. Since the years 1857- 

 1860, national sanitary conventions had been assembling in Phila- 

 delphia, Baltimore, New York, and Boston. During the 1860's 

 the Civil War had temporarily interrupted progress. But once the 

 war was over, the campaign to combat the ravages of dangerous 

 communicable diseases, especially those which had been reaching 

 epidemic proportions, began again to gather momentum. In 1865 

 Dr. Stephen Smith and others had conducted a sanitary survey of 

 New York City and exposed the wide-spread prevalence of diar- 

 rheal disease, typhus fever, smallpox, etc., among its crowded 

 tenement sections and elsewhere. By 1872 the influence of his 

 work had gathered a sufficient following to bring about the 

 appointment of a preliminary committee to form the American 

 Public Health Association; and with its first meeting modern 

 public health practice was given an impetus. The first volumes 

 of its Proceedings are said ^ to contain 



a mine of information, for they indicate the vital matters that concerned 

 the leaders of that day. Many of the principles that were presented in the 

 very first report have become the foundation stones on which public health 

 in America has been built. The broad viewpoint and scope of interest of 

 these pioneers may be indicated by the subjects that were discussed at the 

 first meeting. Among others one notes: 1. Public health education, which 

 was considered even at that time to be of primary importance in public 

 health matters. 2. Vital statistics— race and nationality, rural and urban 

 factors in relation to mortality. 3. The germ theory of disease. 4. The 

 epidemiology of typhoid fever and particularly the relationship of water 



^ Wilson George Smillie, Public health administration in the United States, 17, 

 N. Y., Macmillan, 1940. 



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