IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
79 
Fellow members of the Iowa Academy of Sciences, it is 
to you, individually and collectively, I make an appeal for 
help and guidance in furthering such cause. 
There is need of a greater and more general awakening 
in this matter, there is dire need of legislation upon it, 
more than all, there is need of a rigid enforcement of such 
laws when they are enacted. If but a small fractional 
part of the energy which has been wasted in wrangling 
over religious creeds and doctrines had been devoted to 
the real study of the divine laws of nature and a rational 
explanation of these phenomena as they actually exist, 
our state of civilization would certainly have been lifted 
to a higher plane. In municipal hygiene there are three 
points that demand special consideration; pure wa;ter, 
pure air and pure food. And the greatest of these is pure 
water. 
It is a remarkable fact that men and women are just 
beginning to awaken to a hygienic consideration of the 
water question as a solution of the health problem. This 
awakening, tardy though it be, has given impetus to a 
movement toward public hygiene which promises to result 
in a universal demand that hygienic ordinances be adopted 
by municipalities throughout the length and breadth of 
the land. Where ten years ago a casual glance would have 
sufficed the public of today reads with deep interest the 
report of the condition of the city water. 
This warfare against disease is a matter of vital impor- 
tance, in that it throws a safeguard about home, community 
and commonwealth. 
The time is not far distant when the public in every 
hamlet, town and city will demand that its hygienic opera- 
tions be placed under municipal control. Such a course 
is even now advocated by students, who have spent years 
of research for methods to meet and solve a problem that 
is attaining startling proportions. 
The problem as presented in Cedar Rapids obtains largely 
in the water supply, not so much at present with refer- 
ence to the municipal plant as to neglected wells, to which 
