730 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 358. 



of regret, therefore, that while 41 per cent, of 

 our population live in towns having public 

 water-supplies, only 28.7 per cent, are supplied 

 with sewers, the neglect of which compels re- 

 course to these makeshifts and leads to soil pol- 

 lution and the evils referred to. 



Space will not permit the presentation in detail 

 of all the salient features of this excellent treat- 

 ise. Our experience in the past shows the abso- 

 lute necessity of sanitary training on the part of 

 officers of the line. This work should be in the 

 hands of every officer in the army and acces- 

 sible to every enlisted man. We also venture 

 to express the hope that a chair of hygiene will 

 be created in connection with the military and 

 naval academies. Such a step with men like 

 Dr. Munson as professors would prove of incal- 

 culable value to the nation ; indeed, the princi- 

 ples and practice of hygiene should be taught in 

 every high school and college of the land, for 

 nothing will contribute more to the sum total of 

 human happiness than the preservation of 

 health and eradication of preventible diseases. 



Professor Harrington's manual is also com- 

 plete, authoritative, practical and modern. It 

 is divided into seventeen chapters, and we are 

 pleased to note that a chapter on the ' Hygiene 

 of Occupation ' has been introduced and dis- 

 posed of in a very satisfactory manner. The 

 relations of occupation to health and life were 

 studied as early as 1700 by Ramazzini, an Ital- 

 ian physician, and since then numerous mono- 

 graphs have appeared. We know to-day that 

 persons habitually engaged in hard indoor work 

 present a higher mortality than persons more 

 favorably situated, and that the character of 

 occupations influences to a great extent not 

 only the average expectation of life, but also 

 the prevalence of certain diseases. We know, 

 for example, that tuberculosis is much more fre- 

 quent among persons engaged in dust-inhaling 

 occupations, and that the sharp angular parti- 

 cles of iron and stone dust are more liable to 

 produce lesions of the respiratory mucosa than 

 coal, flour, grain and tobacco dust. We know, 

 too, that certain establishments are more or less 

 productive of noxious and offensive gases, and 

 that workers in lead, mercury, arsenic, phos- 

 phorus, poisonous dyes, etc., suffer especially 

 from the injurious effects, and that other occu- 



pations, such as mining, railroading and con- 

 tact with moving machinery involve special 

 danger to life and limb. For all these reasons 

 the laboring classes need special protection, and 

 in order to render this efficient, it must be pro- 

 vided by the enactment and enforcement of 

 suitable laws. In 1864, 1867 and 1878, Eng- 

 land enacted the so-called factory laws, while 

 the first law as regards factory safety and sani- 

 tation in this country was enacted in Massachu- 

 setts in 1877, since which time 32 states have 

 enacted similar laws. As a result of these laws, 

 the majority of which were enacted during the 

 past decade, commendable progress has been 

 made in the way of ventilation, heating, light- 

 ing, removal of dust and injurious gases, means 

 of escape in case of fire and prevention of in- 

 juries by moving machinery. 



Dr. Harrington is quite right in saying : " It 

 is often difficult or impossible, in the study of 

 the effects of occupation, to eliminate outside 

 influences which may affect the health of the 

 worker as much or more than the circumstances 

 of his trade. A hundred men, for example, 

 from different strata of society, some married, 

 others single; some living in comfortable houses, 

 others in cheerless unsanitary tenements ; some 

 spending their evenings in wholesome recrea- 

 tion amid wholesome surroundings, others doing 

 evening work in places of public entertainment 

 and elsewhere, or spending their time and wages 

 in the paths of vice ; some naturally robust, 

 and others inclined to disease, engage in the 

 same occupation at the same time." 



The writer has always felt that these and 

 other factors, such as faulty nutrition, the re- 

 sult of badly prepared food and cold lunches, 

 cannot fail to lower the power of resistance to 

 disease, especially when the individual, in con- 

 sequence of these very causes, has also become 

 a victim of the alcohol habit, and has advo- 

 cated the erection of sanitary homes for wage 

 earners at reasonable rentals, the encourage- 

 ment of cookery schools, the establishment of 

 sanitary lodgings, model eating-houses and other 

 betterments of industrial conditions. Dr. Har- 

 rington's book is well illustrated and will meet 

 the needs of the student. 



Dr. Bergey's book has just appeared and has 

 been prepared, in the author's language, ' to 



