Public hygiene / [signed] by order of the Board, C. W. Chamberlain, M.D., Secretary State Board of Health.

  • Connecticut. State Board of Health.
Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public hygiene / [signed] by order of the Board, C. W. Chamberlain, M.D., Secretary State Board of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    The mortality returns, together with prompt returns concerning the appearance of epidemic, infectious, and contagious diseases in any locality furnish the chart to guide us in the work of prevention. Besides the great value in-the work of the Board of the complete return of vital statistics we hope to secure, the legal and historic value of complete statistics is unquestionable in relation to Probate Courts, and in securing titles, in deciding questions of legitimacy, settlement, and descent, in their relations to life insurance, annuities, endowments, and in establishing the claims upon government for Pensions, etc. We therefore confidently expect all the assistance necessary in carrying on this part of our work. The work of the State Board of Health, thus briefly sketched in some of its aspects, affecting as it does the interests of the public at large, and having for its central aim and purpose the promotion of public prosperity, and a race of healthy, vigorous, long-lived moral human beings which sanitary administration tends to produce, can depend upon no one profession or class for support, but must enlist the sympathies and co-operation of all in dealing with interests so complex and varied. The value and power of sanitary administration has been so thoroughly tested that we appeal with the utmost confidence for that assistance and co-operation we need in forming local organizations throughout the State, and rendering of practical benefit the knowledge and powers now available in the prevention of disease and death. In no other way can the cause of rational scientific medicine be so well advanced or medical superstitions of every form dissipated, as by teaching the people the true nature of disease, its causes and prevention. Nor can we as physicians better secure for our profession its true place and influence in the State than by working in the field opened to us by the creation of this Board. We therefore appeal especially and confidently to the physicians of the State for their aid; we aesire special correspondents in every town who will report upon the public health and local sanitary affairs. All blanks necessary for correspondence will be furnished by the Secretary. Especial attention is called to the digest of registration laws and regular monthly returns to the registrars earnestly solicited. The value of vital statistics depends upon their comparative com- pleteness and exactness, and this can only be secured by regularity and promptness in the individual returns. By order of the Board, C. W. CHAMBERLAIN, M.D., Secretary State Board of Healtli.