July 2, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



which required every medical ofScer of 

 health to have a diploma of public health 

 in every district of 50,000 inhabitants or 

 to have served as health officer before the 

 passage of the act. Thus a medical officer 

 of health in Great Britain is not only a 

 qualified practitioner of medicine but is a 

 trained sanitarian as well. 



The example set by Cambridge in grant- 

 ing the D.P.fl. was soon followed by other 

 universities in the United Kingdom and at 

 the present time this or a similar degree 

 with the same general purpose is gTanted 

 in sixteen of the universities in Great 

 Britain as well as by the Conjoint Board 

 of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and 

 Surgeons in England, in Ireland and in 

 Scotland. At the same time the various 

 universities offer courses of instruction in 

 hygiene or public health which qualify men 

 to pass the examinations. In general the 

 work required of a candidate covers nine 

 calendar months, thus corresponding to a 

 year's postgraduate work in America. 

 During this period the candidate spends 

 four months in studying the principles of 

 sanitary science in their application to 

 public health problems, "air, water, soil, 

 sewage, food, climatology, bacteriology, 

 parasitology and the general pathology of 

 diseases of animals transmissible to man, 

 etc." (See Nuttall.) Following this he 

 receives instruction in sanitary engineer- 

 ing, food inspection, epidemiology, occu- 

 pational hygiene, vital statistics and pub- 

 lic health laws. Finally during six of the 

 nine months the student must study pub- 

 lic health administration under a qualified 

 medical officer of health and during three 

 months must attend a hospital for infec- 

 tious diseases and acquire training in diag- 

 nosis and in preventive methods. In addi- 

 tion to the men who expect to enter upon 

 an administrative career in public health 

 in Great Britain and who are now required 



to obtain this diploma, many medical grad- 

 uates take the D.P.H. as a post-graduate 

 degree corresponding somewhat to our 

 Master of Arts and a large number of the 

 most eminent scientists in the medical pro- 

 fession there are holders of diplomas in 

 public health. Whatever else may be said 

 of the public health instruction in Great 

 Britain and however true some of the criti- 

 cisms leveled at it may be, it must be ad- 

 mitted that this system has resulted in an 

 enlightened control of sanitary measures 

 by competent authorities which is not sur- 

 passed by any other country in the world. 

 How well this system fits into the general 

 political and governmental systems of 

 Great Britain is shown by a glance at their 

 mortality returns in which a death from 

 typhoid fever is so rare as to be an occasion 

 for comment or in a study of the distribu- 

 tion of rabies which seldom or never ap- 

 pears in the British Isles. The English 

 conception of public health differs essen- 

 tially from the German conception of hy- 

 giene, however, and while differences are 

 difficult to formulate, it may be said in 

 general that in England attention is fo- 

 cused upon the administrative side of the 

 subject, while in Germany the emphasis is 

 laid upon the theoretical or purely scien- 

 tific aspects of the science. This does not 

 mean that in Great Britain the scientific 

 side of public health has been neglected or 

 that in Germany the practical side of hy- 

 giene has been forgotten. It is neverthe- 

 les true that the modern conception of pub- 

 lic health has been furnished the world by 

 Great Britain just as the modern concep- 

 tion of hygiene has been developed in Ger- 

 many and Austria and that there are cer- 

 tain differences between the two concep- 

 tions. 



The English notion of public health pre- 

 vails in Great Britain's colonies and soms 

 years ago the late Wyatt Johnston, of 



