The Sanitary Engineer and the Public Health. 
39 
cent, of the deaths in our Republic are due to such every day diseases as 
consumption, pneumonia, diarrheal diseases, diphtheria, typhoid fever, 
measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever and smallpox — all of which are 
preventable. Occasional visitations of cholera, yellow fever and plague 
epidemics would swell this percentage somewhat, but it is startling 
enough as it stands. Professor J. B. Johnson, in a paper read before 
the Engineers’ Club of St. Louis, November 16, 1898, makes the follow- 
ing statement: 
“The tracing of all these species of sickness to the ravages of micro- 
organisms which are not native to the human body, but which find, in 
weakened and diseased systems, conditions favorable for their propaga- 
tion, has created a greater revolution in our lives and is likely to be of 
far more benefit to the race than Darwin’s and Spencer’s theory of evolu- 
tion, or than all other discoveries of this century combined. Second 
only in importance to these discoveries of the causes of infectious dis- 
eases come the various means of prevention which have already been 
found, most of which it has been the business of the civil engineers to 
provide. Now, I hold that if the provision of the preventive means falls 
within the sphere of duties of the civil engineer, then it becomes his fur- 
ther duty to thoroughly inform himself as to all these causes and rem- 
edies and to lead in the work of educating the public to the point of 
providing the necessary legislation and funds to carry out such measures , 
and to build such works as are required” 
From the same paper I quote the following: “* * * Out of the 
1400 active members of the American Public Health Association in 1894 
there were listed but thirty-three engineers * * *. Practically all the 
rest were physicians. This is a ratio of forty-two physicians to one 
engineer who are struggling in America with the sanitary problems of 
the age. It may be that this is about the ratio of the total membership 
in these two professions in this country, but I should be surprised to 
find that the disproportion is so great.” In the West the proportion of 
engineers upon boards of public health is away below that given above, 
while in the East — in New England particularly — the percentage is 
much higher, and it is a noteworthy fact that the East is doing much 
more effective work in this line than is being done in any other portion 
of the country. This is partly due to the fact that in the East the 
crowded condition of the population makes it imperative that effective 
measures be taken for the prevention of disease, but it is evidently due 
in part to the presence upon boards of public health of men whose pro- 
fessional training and experience have taught them how best to guard 
against the contamination of disease germs by eliminating them from the 
vehicles by means of which they are transmitted. 
To give some idea of what has been done towards the prolongation of 
