Local Boards of Health — Hewitt. 209 



relating to local boards of health, was left untouched. That law 

 we brought from New England, and it is a curious evidence of the 

 opinion our forefathers had of the duties of such boards, that 

 though giving them the most arbitrary power, they do not seem to 

 have thought of them as needed except in emergency, like the old 

 bucket brigade, or militia company. • Like them the board of 

 health, very likely, had the watch-word "Semper paratus," which 

 being interpreted must have meant "always prepared to get ready," 

 but doing little or nothing, except in the presence of an actual 

 outbreak of infectious disease. This is the very reverse of what is 

 needed, as our experience has repeatedly proved, 5^et the old notion 

 persists, and is difficult to eradicate because so many people are 

 content with a traditional faith in sanitary matters, and apparently 

 blind, or indifferent, to the facts of to-day. In the awakening 

 which began all over the country in 1868, or thereabouts, it is 

 notable that the organization began with the highest form, The 

 State Board of Health, as if a long popular education would have 

 to precede the re-organization of the local boards. So it proved, at 

 any rate. The state board was at first an advisory body chiefly, 

 though it was intended to give it the same power as local boards, 

 for the state at large. It soon found enough to do in assisting 

 local organizations, or oftener acting for them in doubt or diffi- 

 culty. In its own special work it was guided by the needs of the 

 time. A special investigation of the character and extent of the 

 abuse of stimulants — drunkenness — was made, and the secretary 

 yisited and reported on inebriate asylums. The result was a plan 

 for an inebriate asylum which, if the advice of the board had been 

 followed, would have been a useful institution to-day. The first 

 study of leprosy in this country was begun by your state board 

 and has been regularly continued since. It was the first state 

 board to study systematically the water supply of its population, 

 and the work is going on regularly in the analysis of suspected, 

 and other waters, still. This by the way: In 1872, the first year 

 of our organization, an epidemic of small-pox, with over 1,000 

 cases and 250 deaths, proved the weakness of our local board of 

 health organizations, and there was no difficulty in getting legis- 

 lation to better it, for in 1874 we had nine boards representing 

 100,000 of the population. So the work went slowly on, the state 

 board doing all it could, by personal inspection, office and labora- 

 tory work, and in other ways, to hasten the advance. 



