RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 65 



then the community must look for the most part elsewhere than to 

 medical men for adequate investigation, legislation, and adminis- 

 tration of public health science. Medical men, must, of course, 

 always participate in the work, in connection, particularly, with 

 the control of epidemics and in those forms of preventive medicine 

 which have to do with vaccines, serums, and other means of modify- 

 ing the vital resistance of the human body. But as regards the care 

 and control of the environment, medical knowledge is not indis- 

 pensable, and the entrance of the engineer and the sanitary expert 

 upon the field, as foretold by Dr. Bowditch nearly twenty years ago, 

 is to-day a conspicuous, and probably a wholesome, fact. As to the 

 attitude of engineering education toward public health science 

 there can be no question. If what I have said before is true, then 

 engineers are bound in the future to take constantly a larger and 

 more important part in public health work, and must be informed, 

 and if possible trained, accordingly. Moreover, as regards both 

 medicine and engineering, the problem is by no means insoluble, 

 for a very short course of instruction rightly given would easily 

 inculcate the necessary fundamental principles, while electives or 

 post-graduate work might enable those few whose tastes led them 

 in this direction to investigate and specialize and more thoroughly 

 prepare themselves for public service. 



I cannot treat, nor do I need to treat, as thoroughly as I would 

 be glad to do, the mutual relations existing between medical science, 

 especially the science of medical bacteriology, and public health 

 science. These are already sufficiently obvious and well known. 

 From time immemorial medical men have served, often devotedly 

 and sometimes heroically, in the cause of public health science. I 

 take it, however, that since we have in this Congress and in our own 

 department a section of preventive medicine, I may pass over with- 

 out comment this part of my subject. 



As regards sanitary bacteriology, however, the relations existing 

 between this and public health science are so fundamental, so ex- 

 tensive, and so important, not only on the medical, but also on the 

 engineering side, that although we have also in this Congress under 

 the department of biology, as is entirely proper, a section of bac- 

 teriology, I may linger at this point for one moment. The bacteria 

 and other microscopic forms of plant and animal life, all of which 

 are conveniently included under the term microbes, have so lately 

 begun to be understood and appreciated that we must still empha- 

 size their extreme importance. The discoveries of the botanists and 

 zoologists and revelations of the microscopists in this domain are 

 comparable, in their importance to public health science, with 

 nothing less than the revelations of the telescope to astronomy. 

 Astronomy had, indeed, existed long before the invention of the 



