OPENING OF HALL OF PUBLIC HEALTH 197 



symbol of the desolation of a city and the struggle that is going on in the wake of 

 the western floods to prevent epidemics more fatal than the floods themselves is a 

 fresh reminder that it is no easy task to hold what we have won. 



The movement for civic cleanliness in which we have the privilege of taking a 

 small part to-night, is an attempt to make it more certain that the slice of the world's 

 surface that we call New York shall be a place fitted for the higher life of man and 

 not for the lower life of vermin and microbe. Garbage and rubbish in cellars and 

 streets and lots make the city a home for rats and flies. Undrained marshes and 

 stagnant pools of water make it a home for mosquitoes and malarial germs. Im- 

 proper care of human wastes and foul harbor waters make it a home for the typhoid 

 bacillus. Clouds of irritant dust prepare congenial ground for the germs of tubercu- 

 losis and pneumonia. The removal of these things makes the city a home for civilized 

 man. 



We of the American Museum are proud that we can do our part in helping for- 

 ward movements of this sort. The department of public health is one of the smallest 

 departments of this Museum. It occupies about one per cent of the floor space 

 allotted to exhibition halls. Yet in the mind of its curator this small beginning looms 

 large with future possibilities. It is the thin point at which all the departments of 

 the Museum touch the practical daily life of man. With the advice of the department 

 of geology we have prepared maps and diagrams showing the relations of rainfall 

 and rock formations to public water supply. A preparator skilled in the service of 

 the department of mammalogy has made for us a group of rats which are important 

 as the carriers of bubonic plague. Through generous expenditure of time and energy 

 on the part of the department of invertebrate zoology we have been able to prepare 

 models of the microorganisms of lakes and reservoirs and of some of the insects which 

 ■carry disease. 



It happens that the new exhibits for the first time formally displayed to-night 

 deal with this last problem of insect-borne disease and are therefore particularly 

 germane to the objects of Dr. Lederle's city cleaning movement. The models of the 

 mosquito in the Darwin hall have for many years testified to the interest of the 

 Museum in these practical problems of human welfare. The new material deals 

 particularly with two other insect-carriers, the flea and the fly, and marks the begin- 

 ning of a somewhat extensive plan for a comprehensive exhibit of insects in relation 

 to disease. We have now installed a striking model copied from an original in the 

 possession of the U. S. Public Health Service of a corner of a kitchen and cellar in 

 California where rats, the hosts of the germ of plague, had taken almost complete 

 possession of the premises; and as a companion we have a small model of a house 

 and barn protected against vermin by approved rat-proof construction. We have 

 small models showing how an ill-kept farm threatens the health by polluted water 

 and the breeding of flies and mosquitoes and how all these conditions are remedied 

 on a well-kept farm. We have a model showing how much more fatal were typhoid 

 germs than bullets in the Spanish war of 1898. Finally we have an enlarged model 

 of the house fly itself, one foot long, upon which the patience and study and artistic 

 skill of Mr. I. Matausch have been constantly employed for over nine months." 



After the speaking a remarkable moving picture film was shown illustrating the 

 life history and habits of the fly. This was kindly loaned for the occasion by Mr. 

 Edward Hatch, Jr., chairman of the Fly-fighting Committee of the Merchant's 

 Association. 



The exhibits so far installed include only the beginning of the contemplated sec- 

 tion dealing with the relation between insects and disease and the department of 

 public health plans to continue during the coming summer the preparation of exhibits 

 dealing in particular with the fly- 



