HISTORICAL SKETCH OF EARLY HEALTH REGULATIONS IN 
IOWA. 
BY L. S. ROSS. 
The immediate cause for the establishment of rules and regulations to 
protect the health of a municipality or a state, often is the fear of the 
introduction of some disease that is foreign to the community. Possibly 
some other disease is common to a community, its effects, even its rav- 
ages are matters of common knowledge, but because of that familiarity its 
presence is expected ; the people are accustomed to it. In reality some- 
what of a fatalism with reference to it is established, and no rigorous 
measures are taken against it for defense or for elimination. It seems 
we fear the unfamiliar, and accustom ourselves' to the presence of the 
familiar. Our forces are mobilized for defense, first against the foreign 
foe, then later against the foe at the fireside. 
Early attempts toward concerted action against diseases in the colonies 
of Massachusetts and New York were directed against those that were 
brought from foreign ports on ship board. In the Territory of Iowa the 
first lines of defense were likewise thrown out to check the advance of 
diseases from foreign lands that had effected entry at New Orleans, and 
were making their way by boat up the Mississippi river, toward the river 
towns of the Territory. Cholera and ship fever were feared as deadly 
invaders. Naturally, cholera follows the routes of travel: its ravages 
may be fearful. The mention of it caused fear and even panic. Tuber- 
culosis and diphtheria and scarlet fever were common, and claimed many 
more victims but because they were common and were not so spectacular 
in their effects, the high rate of their mortality was not fully realized. 
And in fact, at the present time the full import of the prevalence of 
(tuberculosis is realized by a comparative few only. The Asiatic cholera 
tin Iowa, or in the entire country, has been a mere passing incident; 
tuberculosis is a factor in national development. 
The development of the sanitary regulations of the State of Iowa is 
logically divided into two parts: the one including the time prior to the 
establishment of the State Board of Llealth in 1880, the other the time 
subsequent to that date. The first may be known as the early period 
and the second as the recent. It is the purpose of this paper to record 
