751 
is the principal acted upon in many of the European cities. Aiming to control 
the fountains of supply, the authorities largely prevent deleterious and adul- 
terated food from reaching the hands of the retailers.® 
The board of health, in its annual report for 1877, the last report 
it was ever to issue, again called attention, but only in a general way, 
to the importance of supervising the sale of milk, and particularly 
to the relation between the production of milk under insanitary con- 
ditions and the unwholesomeness of the article produced. * 6 
For several years past the board of health had had the services of 
an analytical chemist to assist it in procuring and maintaining the 
purity and wholesomeness of the food supply, but with the advent of 
the fiscal year 1876-77 his name disappears from the records. The 
situation is graphically shown in a resolution that appears in the 
minutes of the board for June 30, 1876: 
On motion of Professor Langston it was ordered that all employees of the 
board except the poundmaster and the force serving under him be discharged 
to take effect this day. 
The board of health was being strangled to death by the withdrawal 
of the funds necessary for its operations. Arrangements were made 
for the continuance of the work of the board with a very much re- 
duced force, but the board died on June 11, 1878. No provision was 
ever again made for the appointment of an analyst for the board or 
for its successor, the health department, until July 28, 1892. In the 
meantime, in so far as related to the analysis of foods and other ar- 
ticles, the board of health and the health officer had to rely on such 
outside assistance as they might be able to obtain. Although it had 
been charged, by law, with the duty of preventing the sale of un- 
wholesome food in the cities of Washington and Georgetown, and 
endowed with broad legislative power, no action seems ever to have 
been taken by the board to regulate the milk supply of these cities 
further than to promulgate the ordinance of May 15, 1871, c and to 
enforce that ordinance in such manner as its available force would 
permit. There had been much in the way of suggestion and recom- 
mendation for improvement, but nothing in the way of action. The 
time was not yet ripe. 
The board of health of the District of Columbia became extinct 
with the passage of an act entitled “ An act providing a permanent 
form of government for the District of Columbia,” approved June 
11, 1878, and its legislative power died with it. The new law pro- 
vided, with respect to the board of health, as follows : 
That in lieu of the board of health now authorized by law, the Commissioners 
of the District of Columbia shall appoint a physician as health officer, whose 
® Report of Board of Health, 1875, p. 72. 
6 Report of Board of Health, 1877, p. 33. 
c See page 749. 
