THE BOARD OF HEALTH AND TUBERCULOSIS. 
105 
It is to be hoped that Tesla, or some one else, may so im¬ 
prove the X-rays that human localized tuberculosis may be 
cured by destroying the bacilli in the lungs or other organs and 
tissues of the system. 
Humanity demands that our Indian wards should receive 
better protection from Sanitary Boards. The meat animals for 
their food is of the worst and most dangerous character. Many 
of the animals are poor, diseased and so imperfectly cooked 
when slaughtered, that the mortality among these tribes is fear¬ 
fully and unnecessarily great, as compared with our more civil¬ 
ized communities. I have been credibly informed by a most 
worthy and honorable government inspector of Indian supplies, 
that he has been approached by wholesale grocers to permit bad 
supplies to be passed. Even three thousand dollars were offered 
to try to corrupt this noble Christian gentleman. No blame 
can be attached to our general Government. How nobly has it 
responded to our fellow countrymen who have so recently and 
:so severely suffered from floods in the West. 
Dr. Daniel Lewis, President of the State Board of Health, 
said in a paper recently read before the Society of Medical Juris¬ 
prudence : “ It is but a single step from the treatment of disease 
to the even more important field of its prevention, and preven¬ 
tive medicine is destined to become the noblest achievement of 
the medical profession of the twentieth century.” 
Dr. Lewis and his worthy confreres are doing a noble work 
in the promotion of State and city sanitation, but until both 
branches of the medical profession join hands with the legal 
profession and earnestly and wisely enter into local and State 
politics, we can never secure adequate laws by which the means 
for protection of the public health shall be secuied. If the great 
State of New York should appropriate half a million of dollars 
annually until the infectious diseases within its borders were so 
far extinct as to render a fifth, or less, of the amount adequate 
for protection from all sources, internal and external, the in¬ 
creased earning capacity of its people would make the tax a small 
one so far as raising revenue for sanitation is concerned. 
