Makoh 14, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



249 



much upon the securing of a properly 

 trained personnel as upon the appropria- 

 tion of adequate funds. The apprentice- 

 ship system of the past, the trusting to 

 good fortune in finding medical men who 

 have the imagination and energy to make 

 themselves into public health officials will 

 no longer serve our needs. Specialized 

 agencies of training must be provided. 



In response to this demand for a trained 

 personnel for public health administration 

 universities began some time ago to offer 

 special courses. Pennsylvania took the lead 

 in 1909, followed the next year by Harvard 

 and the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology which cooperated in establishing a 

 curriculum. By 1915 eight other institu- 

 tions were giving more or less attention to 

 the training of public health officers. As 

 was to be expected there was no uniformity 

 in requirements or curricula, no standard- 

 izing of degrees. A premature agreement 

 on these points would have been unfor- 

 tunate. In every ease the importance of 

 practical work was recognized. For ex- 

 ample at Harvard the opportunity to co- 

 operate with Massachusetts towns and cities 

 in making health surveys and in providing 

 field experience for prospective health offi- 

 cials was wisely utilized. The new plans 

 flf the Harvard Medical School for research 

 in occupational diseases, for demonstrations 

 in industrial hygiene in connection with 

 factories and stores, for the training of a 

 ^special personnel and for the publication 

 of a journal are significant of the univer- 

 sity attitude toward the problems of public 

 health. 



, It is in the keeping with the spirit of this 

 university that a serious attempt should be 

 made here to establish on an adequate basis 

 the training of public health officers, labo- 

 ratory men, specialists in epidemiologj', 

 field workers of all kinds, public health 

 nurses and others. The School of Hvgiene 



and Public Health which opened its doors 

 last October is a typical university-institu- 

 tion. While it is closely related to other 

 .divisions of the university, notably the 

 medical school, the hospital, the engineering 

 department, the courses in law and the 

 social sciences, the new school is in no sense 

 subordinate to any or all of these ; it has its 

 own individuality, its own faculty and stu- 

 dent body, its own quarters and equipment, 

 its own esprit de corps, its own professional 

 point of view. It will have relations in the 

 field with federal, state and local health ad- 

 miinistrations for purposes of practical 

 training. It already counts among its lead- 

 ers men of distinction in several fields of 

 public health ; it is seeking others who will 

 round out the staff and man every phase of 

 work which bears fundamentally on the 

 problems of preventive medicine both in the 

 laboratory and in the field. 



The new school will not only provide 

 (thorough courses in the fundamental chem- 

 ical, biological and medical subjects in 

 their many specialized phases, but will lay 

 stress upon vital statistics, upon sanitary 

 engineering, upon the sociological aspects 

 of public health, upon community su^•vey^, 

 upon the technique of administration. It 

 is significant of the new attitude toward 

 preventive medicine that from the outset 

 attention is being given to the problems of 

 nutrition. It does not seem prematurely 

 philanthropic to establish, if possible, such 

 basic norms for human beings as have been 

 in some degree worked out for hogs and 

 cattle ! Prevention is being more and more 

 positively interpreted into a better stand- 

 ard of living, in terms of working condi- 

 tions, housing, food, exercise, recreation, 

 sociability and happiness. The field of in- 

 dustrial hj'giene has great possibilities. A 

 modern school of public health will inev- 

 itably be compelled to widen its scope and 

 to extend its interests with the develop- 



