July 15, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



29 



dead letter. Prof. John B. Clark of Smith College would trust to 

 political education. " The specific point," he says, " in which in- 

 telligence can do the most immediate good, is in the labor-organi- 

 zations from which the political pressure proceeds." 



The Chicago Tribune sends us the following : " The Tribune 

 holds that restrictive legislation is not only advisable, but necessary, 

 though admitting it may be carried too far, and has often been 

 overdone in the past. You have doubtless noticed that the relative 

 breadth of restrictive legislation varies with the development of 

 civilization in a community. At first all is arbitrary, each offence 

 being treated on what the judge or judges (maybe dictator or ple- 

 biscite) regard as the merits of the individual case, without regard 

 to precedent. As the community grows, the tendency is to swing 

 towards the other extreme, and the resulting over-legislation is more 

 slowly corrected. Bad laws are repealed, good ones consolidated, and 

 special legislation forbidden for the future by constitutional enactment. 

 These three phases may be said to be approximately represented by 

 the mining-camp in this country, the frontier State, and the older 

 State. Illinois is a senior of Minnesota in the family of States, and 

 may therefore be expected to be less paternal in legislation. And 

 there is reason to believe that a careful comparison of the two 

 would show this to be the fact. Undoubtedly the best form of 

 government, and we may even say the ideal one, is that in which 

 an appeal to the common law would suffice as a rule of action in 

 all courts, and its interpretation be found adequate to the punish- 

 ment of wrong-doing by any member of the community, however 

 prominent he may be. But no State in the Union has yet reached 

 the stage where this could be depended upon ; and, till this has 

 been attained by a process of slow growth, it seems to be necessary 

 to resort to some kind of special legislation to provide against new 

 forms of wrong doing which every now and then crop out in the 

 race between conscientiousness and rascality." 



Prof. E. J. James prefers to secure better legislation by improv- 

 ing the grade of legislators. He would not " restrict the power to 

 Legislatures to do much good, for fear they may do some harm," 

 by constitutional amendments. 



The replies mentioned above are fairly typical of the divergent 

 views presented. Had space permitted, we should have been glad 

 to produce more of our replies in full. But our end is gained if we 

 shall have succeeded in directing thoughtful attention to the ten- 

 dency developing among us. As Dr. Shaw says in his original 

 article, we think we are proceeding on one economic theory, but our 

 actual legislation is in direct opposition to that theor)'. We are not 

 asking for a restoration of laissez-faire ; but we should like to know 

 whether this perpetual running to the Legislature for purely private 

 enactments meets with the approval of the thinking men of the 

 country. We do not believe that it does. We believe, with Pro- 

 fessor Perry of Williams College, that interference results from the 

 attempts, often successful, of individuals to accomplish, in the name 

 of the State, their own personal ambitions and desires. We believe 

 that when the people at large realize the extent to which paternal- 

 ism in legislation has developed, they will declare themselves with 

 no uncertain sound as in favor of the fundamental American prin- 

 ciple of individual liberty and individual responsibility. They will 

 just as emphatically refuse to permit the State's power to be prosti- 

 tuted to personal ends. 



HEALTH MATTERS. 

 Preventive Medicine. 



In an address on the recent advances in preventive medicine, de- 

 livered at the thirty-eighth annual meeting of the American Medi- 

 cal Association, Dr. G. H. Rohe stated that the danger of an invasion 

 of this country by cholera was greater than it had been at any time 

 during the past three years. The United States are threatened 

 from three sources : first, from Europe, by way of the Atlantic 

 Ocean ; second from Japan, by way of the Pacific ; and, third, from 

 the west coast of South America, by way of the Pacific, or by way 

 of Mexico and our southern border. The Isthmus of Panama and 

 the South Atlantic lines of transportation may also act as gateways 

 to the infection. 



In this address. Dr. Roh6 refers to the researches of Shakspeare, 

 Koch, and Pettenkofer into the relations between cholera and its 



bacillus or spirillum. He. also alludes to the claims of Freire of 

 Brazil, and Carmona of Mexico, concerning protective inoculations 

 against yellow-fever, and to the fact that these claims are now be- 

 ing investigated by Dr. Sternberg, under the authority of the presi- 

 dent. A brief history is given of the cases of scarlet-fever which 

 have occurred in England, apparently having their origin in milk 

 from diseased cows. We have already mentioned these cases and 

 the able investigation of them by Mr. W. H. Power of the English 

 local government board. The subjects of tuberculosis and typhoid- 

 fever also receive attention. 



Decided advances have been made in the disposal of the refuse 

 of cities. The cremation of garbage has been carried out at Mon- 

 treal, Canada, and at Wheeling, W.Va. The irrigation system of 

 sewage-disposal has been greatly extended in Germany. In Berlin 

 it has given great satisfaction, the sewage of 900,000 people being 

 carried to irrigation-fields, and the water which drains off being 

 submitted to chemical examination for evidences of pollution, which 

 were discovered but once during an entire year. The objection 

 that this system of sewage-treatment is not applicable in cold 

 climates is invalid, as is shown by the results in Pullman, 111., and 

 in Dantzig, Germany. Birmingham, England, with a population of 

 600,000, has adopted the irrigation system, and the income realized 

 during 1885 from the sale of stock and produce from the sewage- 

 farm amounted to over $100,000. 



During the past year the poisonous effects of tyrotoxicon, dis- 

 covered by Professor Vaughan, have been witnessed repeatedly in 

 persons who have taken milk and ice-cream. Professor Vaughan 

 has made the suggestion that this ptomaine may be the active 

 cause of cholera-infantum. The question of public baths is treated 

 very fully in the address. Public, like private, bathing institutions 

 must make provision for individual baths. Large pools, in which 

 many persons bathe at once, fail to answer the requirements of 

 sanitary science or of public decency. A French army surgeon, 

 Duval, has overcome this difficulty, and now both the French and 

 German soldiers have proper facilities for bathing. The latter are 

 required to bathe every week, the government furnishing the bath- 

 room, warm water, soap, and towels. In our army and navy no 

 steps have been taken to introduce this reform, although Dr. 

 Billings has shown its feasibility. Dr. Lassar of Berlin has demon- 

 strated the practicability of separate bath-rooms in connection with 

 public bathing, and has been urging the extension of the military 

 system to the civil population, so that every German may have his 

 weekly bath. He gives excellent illustrations of the practical bene- 

 fits to be derived from the adoption of such a system. At the 

 white-lead vi'orks in Ehrenfeld, the eighty employees are required 

 to bathe weekly, the facilities being furnished by the proprietor. 

 In the first year, 1884, the sickness was reduced twenty per cent, 

 and in 1885 it was reduced still lower, fifty per cent. In certain 

 dye-works in Berlin, ten rooms, containing shower-baths, have been 

 provided for workmen and their families, and for all who desire to 

 use them. In Gottingen, with a population of 21,000, of which 

 number 3,000 are children who attend the public schools, baths are 

 fitted up in the basement of one of the school-houses. A class of 

 fifty can bathe in an hour. Each child has the opportunity of 

 bathing once in two weeks, and seventy-five per cent of the children 

 avail themselves of it. The authorities and teachers are unanimous 

 upon the point that the system is of great benefit to the children, 

 not only from its direct sanitary advantage, but from the habits of 

 cleanliness formed, to which they are likely to adhere through life. 

 The only cities in the United States having public baths are, Bos- 

 ton, with 17; New York, 15; Philadelphia, 5; Brooklyn, 3; Cleve- 

 land and Hartford, each i ; and Buffalo, the number not given. In 

 New York, 3,431,086 persons bathed from June to October in 1883; 

 during the same time in Boston, 959,765 ; and in Brooklyn, 225,885. 

 In eighteen cities where there are no public baths, only about 

 twenty-three per cent of the residences are supplied with bath-tubs. 

 Dr. Roh6 concludes his address with a statement of some of the 

 results of the application of sanitary measures, quoting the statistics 

 of Dr. Baker in Michigan, and Dr. Ogle in Great Britain. The 

 address is an admirable rhumd of what has been done in the realm 

 of preventive medicine, and no one can read it without being im- 

 pressed with the great strides which have recently been made in 

 this field of research. 



