WILLIAM THOMPSON SEDGWICK 257 



Mrs. Richards and their pupils, Hazen, Whipple, Fuller and 

 Jordan, he laid the foundation of modern sanitary science in its 

 bacteriological and engineering aspects, as distinct from those 

 which deal with the problems of the pathology and diagnosis of 

 disease. His contributions to epidemiology in the study of 

 water and milk-borne epidemics, conducted at this time, were of 

 the highest scientific importance. The growth of the whole 

 public health movement in America was, from 1890, connected 

 in an intimate fashion with the development of the Department 

 of Biology and Public Health at the Institute and of the School 

 for Health Officers conducted in cooperation with Harvard 

 University during recent years. It would be difficult to name 

 any important health activity, investigative, administrative or 

 educational, to which Sedgwick's pupils have not contributed in 

 an important degree. It may be fairly said that he created the 

 new field of non-medical sanitary science. Pubhc health began 

 as a branch of medicine but Sedgwick has taught America, and, 

 through his pupils, is now teaching Europe that the two fields 

 are intersecting but distinct, and that sanitary engineers, bacte- 

 riologists and even health administrators may be trained for the 

 highest type of pubhc service without passing through the 

 estabhshed course which leads to the medical degree. The last 

 important idea, which he put forward only a few months before 

 his death, was the suggestion of a bifurcated course, based on 

 the same two years of pre-clinical work, but leading in the last 

 two years to the alternative degrees of Doctor of Medicine or 

 Doctor of Pubhc Health; and this suggestion was the logical 

 development of his life work. 



Aside from a multitude of important technical papers and 

 addresses, Sedgwick was the author, or joint author, of five 

 books which admirably express the more important interests of 

 his professional life. "General Biology," pubhshed with E. B. 

 Wilson in 1886 crystallized in effective form the viewpoint 

 derived, through Martin, from Huxley of biology as a broad and 

 fundamental discipline dealing with the underlying phenomena 

 of protoplasmic action; and no single work has perhaps had so 

 large an influence upon the teaching of the biological sciences 



