324 A HISTORY OF NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION 



American Social Hygiene Association. Dr. Biggs was decorated 

 by the King of Spain for the valuable services he has rendered the 

 world as a hygienist and sanitarian. 



Besides having made many valuable contributions to nearly all 

 the clinical, pathological, and bacteriological branches of internal 

 medicine, Dr. Biggs has rendered the most conspicuous services 

 to sanitary science, and particularly in the prevention of tuber- 

 culosis. He occupied the position of General Medical Officer of 

 the Department of Health of the city of New York from 1901 to 

 1914. Since that date he has been the Health Commissioner of 

 the State of New York. As General Medical Officer of New 

 York city, Dr. Biggs was responsible more than any other medical 

 man in this or any other country for obtaining the official rec- 

 ognition of tuberculosis as a communicable and reportable dis- 

 ease in order to combat it successfully. As already mentioned 

 in our general history, it was due to the efforts of Dr. Biggs and 

 his co-workers, Dr. T. Mitchell Prudden and Dr. Joseph D. 

 Bryant, that a voluntary notification of private cases of tuber- 

 culosis and a compulsory notification of all cases treated in insti- 

 tutions was inaugurated by the New York Health Department in 

 1893, and that in 1897 the Department adopted regulations re- 

 quiring the notification of all cases. 



But Dr. Biggs was not satisfied with a mere statistical control 

 of tuberculosis. He inaugurated at the same time a system 

 whereby an early and definite diagnosis of all cases of tuberculosis 

 could be obtained. This consisted in the gratuitous examination 

 of any specimen of sputum sent to the Health Department's lab- 

 oratory for that purpose. To this Dr. Biggs added educational 

 measures. Circulars teaching the simple rules of the prevention 

 of tuberculosis, designed to reach the different classes of the com- 

 munity, were widely distributed. For the foreign population 

 these were translated into their respective languages. 



In 1902, when the author presented an appeal for the formation 

 of a committee or society for the prevention of tuberculosis in 

 New York, Dr. Biggs was the first to sign, and from the day of its 

 first meeting he has been a most active member of the Com- 

 mittee for the Prevention of Tuberculosis of the Charity Organ- 

 ization Society, now the New York Tuberculosis Association. 



