606 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



This city is in a transitional stage ; it is passing from the town into a city, 

 which if judiciously governed and instructed will, in a short time, become a 

 great metropolis. 



To the people of this city then, the study of sanitary regulations has become 

 a necessity. It has been my fortune to investigate, to some extent, the chief 

 great lines of human thought, theology, jurisprudence and science; and during 

 the past four years my study has been exclusively devoted to sanitation, or to the 

 protection of the public health, and I have no hesitation in saying that this latter 

 science is the most essential field for human study and investigation, and offers 

 to society the most practical results and the greatest benefits. 



To the student of history there is a great fascination in the study of the moral, 

 social and intellectual development of our ancestors ; and no man living amidst 

 railways, telegraphs, and comfortably constructed dwellings can go back to the 

 days of the earliest history of our Indo-Germanic ancestors, when they were but 

 little more than savages, and then trace their development; first, their wrestle 

 with religion ; next, their struggle for personal and political liberty, and subse- 

 quently their invention of the practical arts and sciences without mingled feelings 

 of pride, wonder and reverence. 



In surveying the results of the intellectual development of our race, we must 

 be struck with two facts, namely : The centralization of mankind in great cities, 

 and their increased attachment to this earthly existence. The massing of human 

 beings in great centers seems to be the unavoidable result of our material and 

 social development. These cities are manufactories of all those articles which 

 we consider necessary to our comfort. These are also the centers of thought 

 and of intellectual production and mental commerce, which, in the present brain 

 development of our race are as essential to our happiness as are our material in- 

 ventions. 



The increased attachment of mankind to this earthly home as a result of our 

 modern civilization, is equally apparent. In making this statement, I would not 

 underrate popular faith in a future existence. No doubt this quality of mind is 

 as general now as it has been at any time past in the history of the race, but 

 such are the comforts, material and intellectual, which environ our present exist- 

 ence, that the majority of mankind prefer to bear the pleasures and enjoyments 

 which they have, than to flee to those they know not of. There is nothing 

 strange in this worldly attachment; it would be unaccountable were it otherwise. 

 When we consider the advantages which surround our existence, compared to 

 the meagre pleasures and conveniences of our ancestors, our homes seem like 

 dream-lands, and our material and intellectual advantages like hallucinations or 

 flights of imagination. Let us for a moment survey some of our advantages. 



First, we may remark that the invention and use of the sewing machine, 

 electric light, telephone and telegraph are within our own recollection. To some 

 of us this is true in regard to the invention of and use of the railroad, steamboat, 

 and steamship. The use and application of light within our recollection has 

 almost revolutionized our social organization. For all purposes of business or 



