The sanitary condition of Boston. The report of a medical commission, consisting of Chas. E. Buckingham, M.D., Calvin Ellis, M.D., Richard M. Hodges, M.D., Samuel A. Green, M.D., and Thomas B. Curtis, M.D., appointed by the Board of Health of the City of Boston, to investigate the sanitary condition of the city, appointed by the board of health of the City of Boston.

  • Boston, Massachusetts. Medical Commission on the Sanitary Condition of Boston.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sanitary condition of Boston. The report of a medical commission, consisting of Chas. E. Buckingham, M.D., Calvin Ellis, M.D., Richard M. Hodges, M.D., Samuel A. Green, M.D., and Thomas B. Curtis, M.D., appointed by the Board of Health of the City of Boston, to investigate the sanitary condition of the city, appointed by the board of health of the City of Boston. 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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    The importance of our task is sufficiently manifest; its vastness is also at once apparent when we reflect that no less a problem is set before us than to estimate the practical value and efficacy of all the varied resources of public hygiene, as applied and carried out in a city of over o50,000 inhabitants. A lifetime would not suffice for investigations at once ot such wide comprehensiveness and of such infinite detail, did we not at the outset recognize the necessity of limiting our undertaking, with a view to its earlier usefulness. Therefore, when we shall have ascertained, by comparison of the past and present sanitary history of Boston with that of other communities of the old and of the new world, to what extent we have reason to feel dissatisfied with our pres- ent sanitary condition, we shall make it our task rather to point out in what direction danger lies, and where reform appears to be needed, than to prescribe in detail all the measures which may usefully be adopted throughout the community. The exceptionally high death-rate of this city in the years 1872 and 1873 was, as we have said, the occasion and incen- tive of our investigations. Before instituting an extended examination into statistics, of which death-rates are an important part, it may be well, in consideration of recent dissensions on this subject, to bestow some attention to the question of the significance and value of general death-rates. It had, until lately, been generally admitted, without ques- tion, that in the proportion of deaths to population we had a satisfactory approximative measure of the sanitary condi- tion of any community. General death-rates ” which ex- pressed that proportion by stating the number of deaths per annum to one thousand living inhabitants were supposed to represent, in a convenient and ready way, the degree of prevalence of fatal disease in any given population or group of inhabitants; and for the purpose of comparing the sail-