796 
losis. In 1879 Congress created a National 
Board of Health, whose duty it was to make 
investigations into the causes and means of 
prevention of contagious and infectious dis- 
eases, to indicate measures of national im- 
portance and to be a center of information 
for all matters relating to public health. 
For want of appropriation this important 
body has ceased to exist, and since 1883 
the duties relating to international and in- 
terstate quarantine have been discharged 
by the Surgeon-General of the Marine Hos- 
pital Service; his bureau, apart from the 
management of hospitals and stations for 
the care of sick and disabled seamen of the 
merchant marine, has also undertaken the 
collection and dissemination of mortality 
statistics and sanitary information, scientific 
investigation into the causes of disease, the 
physical examination of immigrants under 
the law excluding those affected with con- 
tagious disease—service in the office of con- 
suls at foreign ports to assure the accuracy 
of bills of health—and other miscellaneous 
duties. Since Congress has failed to act 
upon the President’s repeated recommenda- 
tion and the petition of numerous medical so- 
cieties for the creation of a National Health 
establishment, there is no good reason why 
the scope of duties and powers exercised by 
the Marine Hospital Service should not be 
enlarged. 
An advisory board, composed of one repre- 
sentative from the various State Boards of 
Health, the chiefs of the medical depart- 
ment of the army and navy, and of the 
Bureau of Animal Industry, Census and 
Weather Bureau, and one of the legal offi- 
cers of the government, could meet once or 
twice a year and decide upon a line of work 
for the promotion of public health. 
One of the most pressing needs is an in- 
vestigation into the pollution of water-sup- 
plies when such pollution affects or threat- 
ens to affect the sanitary condition of the 
people of more than one State, because the 
SCIENCE. 
LN. S. Vor. VI. No. 152. 
individual States are powerless to protect 
themselves against the misdeeds of their 
neighbors. Mr. Barthold’s bill for the ap- 
pointment of a River Pollution Commis- 
sion, two years ago, was defeated; yet that 
same Congress appropriated $40,000 for the 
extermination of the Gipsy moth. EHng- 
‘land enjoyed the benefit of such a commis- 
sion as early as 1855, and, in order to pre- 
vent, remedy and remove the danger of 
polluted water-supplies, adopted a compre- 
hensive system for the disposal of sewage 
and of water filtration, the fruits of which 
have already been referred to. 
We know that the Potomac River re- 
ceives the drainage from every town and 
hamlet washed by its shores and tribu- 
taries, and what is true of the Potomac is 
equally true of the Ohio, Mississippi, Mer- 
rimac, Connecticut, Missouri, the Red 
River, the Columbia and Wabash Rivers, 
which are the sewers and, at the same time, 
the source of water supply for nearly all 
the cities located upon its banks, and these 
cities, as shown by the statistics collected 
by the Marine Hospital Service, show 
“moreover a marked prevalence of typhoid 
fever, confirming what has elsewhere been 
proved, that this disease, as also cholera, 
dysentery and diarrhceal diseases, can be 
carried from one town or city to another 
by means of a water course. 
Surgeon-General Wyman in a recent 
contribution estimates, from statistics re- 
ceived in his office, that every year there 
are no fewer than 45,000 deaths caused by 
typhoid fever alone throughout the United 
States, and, based upon an estimated mor- 
tality of 10%, it is within reason to assume 
a yearly prevalence of 450,000 cases of this 
disease. The average duration of a case of 
typhoid fever is not less than 30 days. If 
we calculate that an average of $1.00 is 
expended per day for care, treatment and 
loss of work, and that the value of a human 
life is $5,000 each, we have a total loss in 
