The past and present condition of public hygiene and state medicine in the United States.

  • Abbott, Samuel Warren, 1837-1904.
Date:
[1900]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The past and present condition of public hygiene and state medicine in the United States. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    IO arouse the people to the importance of initiating public sani- tary measures. A case of cholera had already been reported at quarantine in New York harbor in December 1848, the disease was prevailing with unusual severity in eastern countries, and there was great fear, specially in the eastern states of the Union (which were then more permanently occupied with settled towns and cities than the western states), lest the experience of 1832 should be repeated. It was this condition of affairs which undoubtedly led the Massachusetts legislature of 1849 to enact a resolve calling for the appointment of a commission to make a sanitary survey of the state and to report upon the same. This commission was appointed by the governor of Massa- chusetts, July 3, 1849. The appointment was made none too soon, for in that year the general sanitary condition of the state, as shown by the succeeding report of the commission, as well as by the unusually high death-rate, was deplorable. Only a few towns had then introduced public water-supplies, cholera was beginning to appear again, and dysentery and other infectious diseases were more destructive than they had been for many years. The report of that commission was an extremely valuable document. It was at once intelligent, thorough, compre- hensive and prophetic, and though several years elapsed after its publication before a general board of health was estab- lished in any state,1 it is nevertheless true, that when such boards were established, the general plan laid down in this report was adopted, and now appears essentially in the organic acts establishing such state boards throughout the Union. The first 3 state boards of health were organized in 3 widely separated states, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Cali- fornia, in the order named; and these were followed by 1) The Louisiana board created in 1855 could hardly be classed as a state board of health though so named in its organic act, since it was created almost entirely for maintain- ing a quarantine to protect the city of New Orleans. See appendix 3.