114 ; KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
and, from all I can ascertain by a careful investigation of the matter, it took 
from eight to ten years to recover from the shock. Indeed, can we say that it 
ever recovered?. What New Haven might have been, had it not been for that 
check, just ata time of rapidly growing commercial importance, we can never 
know, but that citizens left, with their capital, to go into business elsewhere, and 
never came back, and that trade left the place and never returned, is certain. 
What ‘might have been’ had this pestilence not fallen on us eighty-six years ago 
we can never know. What may be, if another pestilence comes, we know 
too well. Too many cities have had such a bitter experience, even in modern 
times, for us to be ignorant of the effects. 
‘¢We insure our manufactories from loss by fire to insure their being rebuilt 
if once burned. Even with this, the temporary suspension of work may drive 
trade elsewhere. Hence premiums are cheerfully paid to guard against the pos- 
sible contingency, and before the conflagration comes we cheerfully purchase fire- 
engines and apparatus, and organize bodies of skilled men to use them when the 
emergency comes. Here it is recognized that all this, though expensive in the 
beginning, is cheap in the end, and yet how reluctantly any such means are ta 
ken to guard against a worse destroyer of our wealth and prosperity. The ar- 
guments used even by official bodies against adequate support of public health 
administration in many, if not most cities, are curiosities of inconsistency, and 
will be cited as such by the next generation. It must not be forgotten that 
health boards are now more strongly demanded and called for because of their 
pecuniary importance than because of their function in allaying human suffering 
or saving human life. So long as merely men died, and health was lost, and sor- 
row fell on thousands of homes, Memphis went on as of old, dug her cesspools 
deeper and more of them, and did without sewers, but when the loud voice of 
trade cried out, ‘We can not afford to allow Memphis to longer stand as a men- 
ace to the commercial prosperity of the great Mississippi valley,’ then, and not 
till then was a system of sewering begun. A high death rate means loosened 
vigor, lessened powers of production, a check on prosperity, a burden on in- 
dustry. A low death rate in modern cities can only be secured by public sanita- 
tion, and by an intelligent and efficient co-operation of the public with an active 
board of health. A single epidemic but one-fourth as bad as that in Memphis 
last year would cost this city more, and leave us with higher taxes, that the most 
expensive system of sewers and of garbage collection than was ever dreamed of 
here. And there is nothing to prevent it but public sanitation. We had that 
very disease here once, and the city did not recover its prosperity for ten years, 
and it lost some phases of prestige which it never regained. An epidemic of 
small-pox a few years since lost to the city of Philadelphia, in ways which could 
be estimated, above $20,000,000. ‘This city a little later was seriously threaten- 
ed with a-similar epidemic, which was effectually stayed, and the health officers 
were, perhaps, more severely criticised for their work than for any other thing 
they have ever done. The results, however, have amply demonstated the wis- 
dom of their action. 
