318 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



sanitary science, knowledge ten or twenty years old is almost as good as none. There 

 is no other single thing which the child needs so much to know as how to keep well. 

 The knowledge which is essential is available; and it can be transmitted only by the 

 school. 



The high schools in New York City have seen this need and this opportunity and 

 have done much toward meeting it. In almost all of them the practical aspects of 

 biology occupy an important place and in many of them, like the DeWitt Clinton 

 High School and the Morris High School, the broader aspects of sanitation are well 

 taught under the head of civic biology, while the larger girls' schools, the Washington 

 Irving and Wadleigh High School, have developed exceedingly promising courses in 

 home sanitation as well. 



In this work there seemed to be an opportunity for cooperation between the 

 newly organized department of public health of the American Museum of Natural 

 History and the public schools of New York; and it is of this cooperation that I wish 

 to speak very briefly to-day. 



The existence of a department of public health in a natural history museum de- 

 serves a word of explanation by the way, for it is, so far as I am aware, a unique 

 circumstance. The American Museum is, I think, the first institution of its kind to 

 grasp the opportunity of attacking the educational problem of public health by the 

 use of museum methods. This development is really however, a natural, almost an 

 inevitable one. Man is an animal and public health is one of the most important 

 phases of his natural history. He is knit up with other animals and plants in a 

 complex chain of interrelationships, beneficent and malign. The plants and animals 

 which serve him for food, the microbes which cause some of his deadliest diseases, 

 the insects and other animals which serve as intermediate hosts, and those which 

 prey upon them in turn, all affect him and act as determining factors in the fate of 

 nations and the progress of civilization. They are as much parts of natural history, 

 broadly interpreted, as habitat groups of birds or preparations illustrating the rela- 

 tions of insects to the plants or other insects upon which they feed. To show these 

 things in graphic form by actual specimens, by models and by diagrams, is the task 

 of a department of health in a natural history museum and it is a task which no 

 other agency is so well fitted to accomplish. 



In the hall of public health of the American Museum we have now, after three 

 years' work, installed three fairly complete series of exhibits dealing with water supply 

 and public health, with the disposal of city wastes and with bacteria, while a fourth 

 series, illustrating the relation of insects to disease is well under way. The water 

 supply series begins with the rainfall and shows by models, diagrams and relief maps 

 how the amount and frequency of rain varies over the continental United States. 

 The physical characters of waters are illustrated by samples of a highly colored water 

 from the Dismal Swamp, of a hard well water from Iowa, of a turbid water from the 

 Ohio River and the like. Glass models show the principal micro-organisms, the algae, 

 diatoms and protozoa, which cause tastes and odors in water-supplies. The danger 

 from polluted water is illustrated by relief maps of famous water-borne epidemics at 

 Lausen, Switzerland, and in the Merrimac Valley. Methods of purifying water, by 

 storage, filtration and disinfection are made clear by models, and finally the results 

 of water purification are set forth in a series of diagrams. 



The models dealing with the disposal of city wastes include local illustrations of 

 pollution of shellfish, floating baths and other dangers of the harbor waters of New 

 York and a detailed presentation of the methods of treating city sewage by screening, 

 sedimentation, filtration and disinfection. 



The bacterial exhibit consists of a series of glass models of the principal disease 

 bacteria, 25,000 times natural size and of photomicrographs illustrating their relative 



