RECORD OF TESTIMONY AND STATEMENTS IN RELATION TO 107 



NECESSITY FOR DISTRICTING PLAN 



lives, over and above the usual death rate, as it prevailed a year ago and for 

 the previous five years. Those deaths were due to organisms which were 

 found constantly in the air of the subway cars, as it was examined in our 

 laboratory. 



That epidemic extended over a period of from eight to ten weeks, 

 during which time it prevailed in our large centers of population in this 

 country, and it occurred at the time of the maximum crowding of stores 

 and places of amusement and traffic conveyances and at a period of maxi- 

 mum of fatigue and exposure, owing to weather conditions and the holiday 

 trade, and it is at such times that we may expect an annual wave of increased 

 respiratory disease. We may expect a repetition of it annually in a greater 

 or less degree as the period of the year comes around when the windows 

 are shut because of the lowering of the temperature, and respiratory dis- 

 eases begin and steadily increase. There are two 1 large episodes in the 

 death rate, one infant mortality — deaths in July and August, and the other 

 the increase in respiratory diseases during the cold months of the year, 

 and that is ascribed by sanitarians to the crowding of people within confined 

 spaces so inadequately provided with means of ventilation that personal 

 resistance becomes too low to avoid infection. 



To indicate the extent to which the Board of Health has considered 

 public danger through the crowding of cars, I would call your attention 

 to orders which were issued to forbid the crowding of cars on certain lines 

 in the city where traffic conditions would permit of such control being 

 put in force. The most noticeable' instances were the cross-town lines in 

 Manhattan, at 86th Street and 59th Street, where the companies admitted 

 that service could be provided sufficient to avoid the crowding of cars to 

 over 50 per cent of their seating capacity, and on Staten Island a similar 

 condition prevailed. When it was called to the attention of the street 

 railways companies that infection of humans occurred as the result of 

 persons crowding in conveyances, they accepted the orders of the Board 

 and complied. This aroused opposition on the part of people whose real 

 estate development was predicated upon permission to carry the crowds 

 regardless of congestion The Board of Health has thought that the 

 time has come, when such crowding should be forbidden, not as a matter of 

 personal convenience, but as a matter of community danger — community 

 health hazard. 



Importance of sunlight 



The causes that take off a large percentage of the lives in a great city, 

 particularly New York City, could be summed up in the words, opportunity 

 tor personal contact and diminished personal resistance. Congestion is a 

 term that can be twisted variously. Diminished resistance of humans, as 

 with vegetation, depends upon the artificiality of their environment. You 

 cannot raise babies any more without light and air than you can raise plants, 

 and where you cannot prove that a disease has followed congestion you 

 can almost always show diminished resistance. 



We should expect less communicable respiratory disease in detached 

 houses than in tenements, but inasmuch as the reporting of respiratory 

 disease is not compulsory, there is no record anywhere in this country 

 of the incidence of respiratory diseases other than tuberculosis. We have 

 no morbidity statistics of the City as a whole and there are no comparative 

 figures to prove it. 



It is proved that sunlight in the living room and the sleeping room 



