Public Health 109 



PUBLIC HEALTH* 



Charles-Edward Amory Winslow, Curator 



The work of the Department of Public Health has continued 

 steadily during the year along the line of the development of 

 the section of our permanent Public Health Exhibit 

 Progress in dealing with Food Needs and Food Economies, A 

 * * complete and detailed plan for this exhibit of diet- 



ary hygiene, occupying fifteen cases, has been out- 

 lined, and the individual specimens, models and diagrams are 

 being prepared and installed as rapidly as our resources permit. 

 Additions made during the past twelve months have dealt 

 particularly with the role of protein and vitamines in the diet 

 and with certain of the broad problems of world production and 

 consumption of food which form the bases of national economics. 

 A series of papers on Dietary Hygiene as Taught by Museum 

 Methods, prepared by Miss Mary Greig for Modern Medicine, 

 represent an important contribution to the analysis 

 Original f dietary needs from an economic standpoint, par- 



fD - ticularly as regards the calcium, iron and phos- 



Hygiene phorus requirements of the human body. A study 



has been begun of the fluctuations in retail food 

 prices in five representative districts of New York City, which 

 we hope to extend and continue during the coming year, and the 

 data in our exhibition hall are kept constantly up to date by the 

 use of the information thus obtained. 



The work of the Department in maintaining and distributing 

 standard cultures of bacterial types has continued as heretofore. 

 The total number of strains under cultivation is 

 Museum now 513 ? a number of strains of lesser importance 



B , V • having been discarded during the year. In the 



period between December 1, 1920, and December 

 1, 1921, 4,867 cultures were sent out to health department and 

 university laboratories, making the total number of subcultures 

 distributed since the opening of the- laboratory in 1911, 34,911. 



Under the Department of Public Health (see also page 218). 



