General War Activities 95 



PUBLIC HEALTH* 



Charles-Edward Amory Winslow, Curator 



As soon as the United States declared war against Germany, 



the plans for the development of the Department 



General War f p u blic Health were so recast as to make the 

 Activities ■ r . . 



educational forces at its disposal of immediate 



service in the national crisis. 



As a first step a special exhibit was prepared illustrating the 

 principal problems of camp sanitation and military hygiene and 

 showing in graphic form how our army is being protected 

 against the dangers of disease. This exhibit, which was opened 

 about the end of April, dealt with the purification of water in 

 the field and the disposal of camp wastes, with the control of 

 insect carriers of disease in army life, with the protection of 

 the recruit by the use of vaccines and sera, with the food and 

 the clothing of the soldier from a hygienic standpoint, and with 

 the prevention of trench foot and other new medico-military 

 problems of the present war. 



The Department of Public Health had already made a begin- 

 ning on an exhibit illustrating the problems of food supply as 

 related to the public health as a distinct section of the perma- 

 nent exhibition in our Hall of Public Health. It seemed that 

 the development of an exhibit of this sort along the immediate 

 practical lines of food conservation offered important possibili- 

 ties of usefulness. All the energies of the department were 

 therefore turned in this direction, and on May 23 a special exhi- 

 bition on Food Values and Economies was opened in the Foyer 

 in connection with a public meeting on Conservation for War, 

 at which addresses were made by the Honorable George W. 

 Perkins, Chairman of Mayor Mitchel's Food Supply Commit- 

 tee, Professor Graham Lusk, of Cornell University, Dr. Her- 

 mann M. Biggs, New York State Commissioner of Health, and 

 Dr. Walter B. James, President of the New York Academy of 

 Medicine. 



Under the Department of Public Health (see also pages 25 and 201). 



