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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1081 



To these aehievements various arms of 

 the federal government have materially 

 contributed, e. g., the U. S. Public Health 

 Service, the Department of Agriculture, 

 the medical corps of the navy, and, espe- 

 cially, the army medical corps which 

 through the splendid and eminently scien- 

 tific labors of Reed, Lazear and Carroll and 

 Carter and Gorgas have solved the deepest 

 mysteries, and overcome the worst difficul- 

 ties, of tropical sanitation. Drs. Blue and 

 White and their associates of the U. S. 

 Public Health Service have likewise earned 

 the honor and gratitude of mankind by 

 their proof that under proper administra- 

 tive measures the bubonic plague of the 

 Orient and the yellow fever of the Occident 

 may alike be held in check in our own 

 country, while, as we are meeting to-day, 

 Strong, formerly a government official, but 

 now in Serbia and Montenegro, represent- 

 ing various more private foundations, is 

 winning fresh laurels for American public 

 health measures. Thus the bold and bril- 

 liant epidemiological work of Boylston 

 and Waterhouse which marked the begin- 

 ning of experimental preventive medicine 

 in the early eighteenth and early nine- 

 teenth centuries, has been continued and 

 extended in the late nineteenth and early 

 twentieth by their still more scientific 

 successors. Some of our state and city 

 boards of health and some of our private 

 institutions and laboratories have likewise 

 lent invaluable assistance, as for example 

 the Massachusetts State Board of Health, 

 the New York City Board, the Rockefeller 

 Institute, and many others. Meantime, 

 less original but not less enthusiastic and 

 faithful work has been done by various as- 

 sociations for the promotion of the public 

 health, such as the American Public Health 

 Association, and the now happily numer- 

 ous anti-tuberculosis societies, the organiza- 

 tions for the promotion of school hygiene. 



for the prevention of infant mortality, and 

 the like. We have also, at last, in addition 

 to a small but increasing number of cred- 

 itable state, town and city boards of 

 health, what is virtually a national board 

 of health, namely, the U. S. Public Health 

 Service — a highly scientific and efficient 

 arm of the federal government, well organ- 

 ized, well equipped, and provided with a 

 staff of able and devoted investigators. 



Up to 1886, preventive medicine chiefly 

 in the form of vaccination was the princi- 

 pal weapon for the promotion of the pub- 

 lic health, and a long step forward was 

 taken when in that year with a reorganiza- 

 tion of the State Board of Health of Massa- 

 chusetts, sanitary engineering became a rec- 

 ognized and indispensable branch of public 

 health science and public health service. 

 Since that time preventive sanitation, and 

 particularly the sanitation of towns and 

 cities in respect to water supplies, milk sup- 

 plies, ice supplies, sewerage, garbage dis- 

 posal, street cleaning, the heating and ven- 

 tilating of public buildings, the smoke 

 nuisance, and other environmental factors 

 of public health or ill-health, has come to 

 receive close attention and treatment. In 

 the further development of preventive 

 medicine and preventive sanitation, public 

 health laboratories for the quick detection 

 of dangerous infections have rapidly been 

 installed almost everywhere in the more 

 progressive American cities and towns. 

 We have begun the medical and sanitary 

 supervision of schools and school buildings. 

 We have invented and put within the reach 

 of all but the very poor, the most complete, 

 convenient and salubrious heating and 

 ventilating appliances in the world, for 

 houses, theaters, halls, hotels and work- 

 shops. We have made ice, once a luxury 

 for kings and emperors, a universal solace 

 for all classes in hot weather. We have 

 perfected and extended enormously the 



