834 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 857 



is devoted to combating imaginary dangers 

 or applied to tasks that have only a re- 

 mote bearing on the public health. 



This condition, as a rule, is not due 

 to ignorance on the part of health officials, 

 but to the pressure of public opinion. 

 Such pressure is often exerted directly 

 through legal ordinances passed by unin- 

 formed legislative bodies, but sometimes 

 also through agitation by mistaken en- 

 thusiasts or through other channels of 

 public opinion. Back of the whole situa- 

 tion is the existence in the public mind of 

 wrong or' antiquated conceptions of disease 

 and the causes of disease. It was unfortu- 

 nate in many respects for the cause of pub- 

 lic health that much of the popular interest 

 m\ health matters was evoked before the 

 germ theory of disease and its corollaries 

 became fully developed. As the result of 

 premature generalization the public has 

 warmly espoused a number of wrong con- 

 ceptions of disease and of ways of prevent- 

 ing disease. To be specific, two instances 

 of this confusion are found in the demand 

 ior garbage disposal and plumbing inspec- 

 tion. 



Sanitarians do not admit that even a 

 grossly improper method of garbage dis- 

 posal can have much to do with the spread 

 of disease in a sewered city or that diph- 

 theria or typhoid fever or any other disease 

 is properly attributable to the entrance of 

 sewer air into dwelling houses. So firmly 

 embedded in public belief, however, is the 

 connection of piles of decaying garbage 

 with outbreaks of infectious disease, and of 

 "defective plumbing" with all sorts of 

 maladies that to the average citizen ' ' garb- 

 age disposal" and "plumbing inspection" 

 tulk large as the chief if not the only ac- 

 tivities of a municipal health department. 



In the light of our present knowledge we 

 may well ask what are the actual dangers 

 to health from these two sources? It is 



now well known to bacteriologists that 

 disease germs do not "breed" in garbage 

 heaps, but that on the contrary if added, 

 from outside they speedily die off. The 

 offensive odors of decomposition may be 

 unpleasant and undesirable; there is no 

 evidence that they produce disease or dis- 

 pose to disease. On the other hand, it may 

 be argued that the existence of heaps of de- 

 composing organic matter tends to main- 

 tain or create general habits of uncleanli- 

 ness which themselves are detrimental 

 in a roundabout way to the health of a 

 community. And again it is known that 

 the house-fly may breed in garbage piles, 

 particularly if horse manure is present, 

 and that under certain conditions this 

 noxious insect may become the bearer of 

 disease germs to food. But when the 

 worst is said it must be admitted that the 

 known danger to health from garbage piles 

 and "dumps" is relatively insignificant 

 compared with the danger from other well- 

 known but less popularly feared sources. 

 Disease does not originate in garbage piles, 

 however offensive they may be; the house- 

 fly, however disgusting and annoying its 

 habits, suffers from no disease transmissible 

 to man, and does not convey disease unless 

 it has access to material in which disease 

 germs are present. The truth is that gar- 

 bage disposal in large cities is more a matter 

 of municipal housekeeping than of public 

 health; proper methods of garbage collec- 

 tion and destruction must be urged rather 

 from economic and esthetic considerations 

 than on hygienic grounds. There are of 

 course certain features in the handling 

 of refuse and waste that need hygienic con- 

 trol, just as there are in street cleaning, but 

 the problem is essentially not one of public 

 health. At present in some cities the de- 

 partment of health is burdened with the 

 task of caring for the city waste and its 

 success or failure as a conservator of the 



