State Board of Health of Massachusetts : a brief history of its organization and its work, 1869-1912 : material compiled mainly from the reports of the Board.

  • Massachusetts. Department of Public Health.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: State Board of Health of Massachusetts : a brief history of its organization and its work, 1869-1912 : material compiled mainly from the reports of the Board. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION OF THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH. Public health questions in Massachusetts were first studied in a com- prehensive manner by a commission appointed in 1849 to report to the Legislature a plan for a sanitary survey of the State. The commission consisting of Lemuel Shattuck of Boston, Nathaniel P. Banks, Jr., of Waltham and Jehiel Abbot of Westfield, made an ex- tensive investigation of all causes affecting favorably or unfavorably the health of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth, and the following year submitted a report to the Legislature. This report is the best public document ever written in Massachusetts, and one of the great documents of the world. It includes specific recommendations for legislation lead- ing to a more efficient control of the factors influencing the health of communities and individuals. In its introduction the report contains the following statement: — We believe that the conditions of perfect health, either public or personal, are seldom or never attained, though attainable; — that the average length of human life may be very much extended, and its physical power greatly augmented; — that in every year, within this Commonwealth, thousands of lives are lost which might have been saved; ■— that tens of thousands of cases of sickness occur which might have been prevented; — that a vast amount of unnecessarily impaired health and physical debility exists among those not actually confined by sickness; — that these preventable evils require an enormous expenditure and loss of money, and impose upon the people unnumbered and immeasurable calamities, pecuniary, social, physical, mental and moral, which might be avoided; — that means exist within our reach for their mitigation or removal; — and that measures for prevention will effect infinitely more than remedies for the cure of disease. The recommendations included in this report were of far-reaching importance. The commissioners recommended that a central board of health be established, which should be charged with the general execu- tion of the laws of the State relating to the health of the inhabitants. They furthermore recommended the establishment of local boards of health; that a census be taken of the people; that there be a systematic registration of births, marriages and deaths; that all causes of diseases