1 & 79 -] 
Its Present and its Future . 
61 
VIII. Sanitary Surveys. 
The intimate relation between health and the configura- 
tion of the soil has been recognised from time immemorial. 
In truth there is reason to suppose that more practical 
weight was given to it in ancient than in modern states of 
society, for while, in the former, security from enemies and 
the possible exigencies of a protracted siege made it imperative 
to seleCt high places capable of good drainage for city sites, 
the demands of commerce are now best met by towns at the 
lowest levels, frequently at the estuaries of rivers and 
marshes formed at the confluence of great streams. While 
the demands of commerce are inevitable, the care upon 
sanitary science to avert as far as possible attendant evils 
is not the less urgent. For this reason the rapidly increasing 
bulk of statistical information upon this subject is a matter 
of great gratulation. The geological surveys prosecuted by 
the State Governments, and latterly extended to the shores 
of the Pacific by the munificence of the National authorities, 
have supplied an admirable foundation. The hydrography 
of the sea-coast and the sea-board estuaries has been exe- 
cuted on a basis so broad and solid that the topography and 
hypsometry of the whole country can be built upon it. In 
addition to these we have a number of studies of the relation 
of topographic and geologic features to one or all the various 
types of disease. 
Even before the inquiry instituted by the medical staff of 
the Privy Council of Great Britain, the extended research 
by Dr. Bowditch* demonstrated the intimacy of the relation 
between wet and retentive soils and the prevalence of con- 
sumption, these conditions of surface structure being 
chargeable with a thousand deaths from consumption in 
Massachusetts alone. Subsequently the fluviate and pond 
basins of Massachusetts were surveyed and mapped out by 
Rickwood. Staten Island having long lain under the ban 
of insalubrity, a number of gentlemen interested in its 
occupancy and improvement instituted a sanitary survey of 
the island, Dr. Elisha Harris and Mr. Frederick Low Olm- 
stead examining into the more general questions involved, 
and Profs. Newbery and Trowbridge the structural condi- 
tions. The influence of the surface-soil and of the under- 
lying rock, its porosity, its bedding and its joints, upon the 
local climate, the drainage, and the attendant salubrity, 
* “ Consumption in New England, or Locality one of its Chief Causes.” 
