PLAN OF A TYPICAL FEVER-NEST, 1865
PLAN OF A TYPICAL FEVER-NEST, 1865
“Pools of filthy water from obstructions at the street corners, and accumulated along the gutters,would quickly disappear, when the people would be convinced of the deleterious effect upon the public health. It will be well for the inhabitants of New York City, and especially for those of this section, when there shall be laws not only to compel them to keep their houses and surroundings clean and free from the effluvia resulting from vegetable and animal decomposition, but to prevent the overcrowding of tenant-houses, where fatal diseases are generated, and where death walks around.”
Thetenant-house population is susceptible of infinite improvement, when once rescued from the reign of filth, and restored to a pure atmosphere and clean homes. The poor live in these wretched tenements because they are compelled to, and notHow to Improvethe Peoplefrom choice. They universally complain that they cannot escape from domestic and street filth. It surrounds and pervades their habitations, always accumulating, and never diminishing. The most tidy house-wife, compelled to live in the midst of this ocean of rubbish, with all its degrading associations, soon finds the same level, and from this she can be rescued only by giving her again a clean and well-ordered home. And such a home every municipal government is bound to secure to the poorest and humblest citizen.
Let the landlord be compelled to keep his house in good repair, supply it with an abundance of pure water, connect the privy with the sewer, open free ventilation, afford means for removal of garbage, and then keep a careful oversight of his tenants, enforcing cleanliness. If this were done, the tenant-house people would immediately improve, and the death-rate, if we may judge from other cities, would fall one-fourth.
Again, the cellar population can be removed from their subterranean abodes, and placed in better homes. Liverpool has solved this problem for us.
In 1847 that city had a cellar population of 20,000; an ordinance was passed forbidding the occupation of underground rooms as residences, with certain restrictions, and within three years the great mass of people in these subterranean haunts were removed to better tenements, with a great reduction of the mortality of the city.
That city, formerly the most unhealthy in England, has continued the reforms thus inaugurated by compelling landlords to improve their tenant-houses, and the result is that it has become one of the healthiest towns of Europe. London has recently taken similar action in regard to cellar tenements. What these cities have done, New York can and ought to do for her public health.
Whatthe diseases which prevail with such fatality in the uncleaned tenant-houses are for the most part preventable, we have the most undoubted evidence. That smallpox is preventable is known to every school-boy, and yet that loathsome disease to-dayA Town ThatWas Immuneprevails throughout all the tenant-house districts of New York, without the slightest restraint on the part of our local authorities. Typhus is to-day ravaging the homes of the poor without “let or hindrance,” and yet cleanliness and pure air are sure preventives. Of this truth these reports furnish many examples.
The fever-nest—West Thirty-third Street—is one of a row of tenant-houses five stories high, and contains 16 families. It was in a filthy condition, without Croton water, waste-pipes stopped, sinks overflowing and emitting offensive odors; fever had prevailed all winter, nearly every person in the house having had an attack, four having died. It was never inspected by a city official. The owner was induced to clean the house, and from that date not a case of fever has occurred. The inspector who reports this case very justly adds: “If, when the first case of fever occurred in this building, the owner had been compelled to put it in a good sanitary condition, six human lives would undoubtedly have been saved, besides a great amount of sickness.”
PLAN OF A REAR CUL-DE-SAC FEVER-NEST, 1865
PLAN OF A REAR CUL-DE-SAC FEVER-NEST, 1865
Cholera infantum and diarrhoeal affections are found in their greatest intensity where putrescible animal matter and domestic filth exist. Remove these causes, or remove the patients from the neighborhood, and these diseases generally disappear at once. Diphtheria is found to be most intense in the vicinity of unclean stables. It is, therefore, with greatpropriety, that the entire class of zymotic diseases are now called “filth and foul air” diseases by the English sanitary writers. Remove the filth and foul air, and these diseases disappear as effect follows cause.
Butwhile it is admitted that the streets of a town may be cleaned, the condition of the poor improved, and diseases, under the most favorable circumstances, prevented, it may be doubted whether the sanitary condition of populous towns can beCan Populous TownsBe Improved?materially changed, and the death-rate greatly reduced. Yet in England, where sanitary science is enthusiastically cultivated, there is not only no doubt that large towns can be thus improved, but that the mortality of London itself may be no greater than that of the country.
Already, indeed, the LondonTimesboasts “that the average of health throughout the City of London is higher than the average of health throughout all England, taking town and country together. The mortality in all England is at the rate of 22.8 in every 1,000 of the population; in the City of London it is at the rate of 22.3 for every 1,000 inhabitants! The improvement has been progressive; it has been slow, but steady and sure. Gradually the mortality has decreased, until the yearly death roll of3,763 has been reduced to 2,904 within a period of nine years, during which the city has been under the rule of the Sanitary Commission. The deaths this year—22.3 per 1,000, or one in every forty-five of the inhabitants—are nine per cent below the general average, and represent a saving of 286 lives. And secondly, this gratifying result has been obtained in the face of obstacles which seemed to be almost insurmountable.”
Liverpool affords a striking example of the power of sanitary measures, rigidly enforced to improve the public health. It was formerly the most unhealthy city of England, being the very home of typhus, smallpox, and allied preventable diseases. But it adopted vigorous measures of reform, improving its poorer districts, and the death-rate has fallen eight in 1,000. Macclesfield, Salisbury, and many other English towns have had their mortality reduced 8, 10, and 15 in 1,000 by the vigorous prosecution of sanitary improvements. All the populous towns of that country are moving in this reform, and, as a result, the general death-rate of towns is approximating that of the country.
TheHealth Officer of London announced that cleanliness would preserve a town from the visitations of epidemics. But there must be cleanliness of the streets, cleanliness of theCleanliness Preservesfrom Epidemicscourts, cleanliness of the apartments, and cleanlinessof the person. On the approach of the cholera in 1849 the town of Worcester, England, determined to test the theory, and set vigorously to work and cleaned the town thoroughly, removing everything of an offensive nature, and adopting the most stringent regulations against the accumulation of filth about or within the homes of the people. The result was that this “destroyer” of unclean cities made a Passover with the people of Worcester, for on every lintel and door-post was written—Cleanliness, Cleanliness. Not a house was entered, and the town was saved in the midst of the most frightful desolation.
New Orleans is another striking example of the value of civic cleanliness. Since, by military regulations, it is kept constantly in a cleanly condition, it has had no visitation of its old enemy, yellow fever.
The degree of public health of a town is therefore measured by its cleanliness, and its capacity for health depends upon its capacity for cleanliness.
Thereis scarcely a city which has such absolute need of an efficient and intelligent sanitary government as New York. On its small territory three, four, or five millions ofImportance of SanitaryGovernmentpeople are yet to be accommodated with houses.Already there are crowded upon less than eight of its thirty-two square miles all of our commercial, business, and manufacturing interests, and the houses of nearly 1,000,000 of people. And in the natural relations of the poor and rich, the former consisting of more than half of the entire population, are crowded into less than a fourth of this area. Of what vast importance is it that a wise and intelligent authority be vigilantly exercised, so that in its future growth and expansion every condition pertaining to health shall be secured to its inhabitants!
It is universally conceded that New York has in the highest degree all the natural advantages of salubrity. Its climate is the mean between the extremes of heat and cold; its topographical peculiarities are admirably adapted for drainage and sewerage; its exposure is southern; its shores are swept by two rivers, which bear seaward everything that enters them beyond the power of the flowing tide to return it; its rural surroundings are of the most healthful. In every respect it is regarded by competent observers as most favorably located for cleanliness, and the highest degree of public health. And there can be no doubt, that should New York be placed under a wise sanitary government, which would improve all its naturaladvantages for health, it would become the cleanest and healthiest city in the world, and one of the most delightful places of residence.
FLOOR-PLAN OF A NEW FEVER-BREEDING STRUCTURE NEAR BROADWAY AND CENTRAL PARK, 1865
FLOOR-PLAN OF A NEW FEVER-BREEDING STRUCTURE NEAR BROADWAY AND CENTRAL PARK, 1865
Butthis is not a matter which concerns the citizens of New York alone. The people of the State have a vital interest in the public health of our city. Connected as it is by means of rapid inter-communication with all parts of the country, there is everyThe Entire CountryConcernedfacility offered for the wide diffusion of the seeds of contagion. It is estimated by accurate statisticians that no less than 250,000 persons pass in and out of New York daily over the ferries and railroads. It could not fail to happen that if any contagious disease prevailed in this city, it would be carried into the country and widely disseminated.And such is now a matter of daily occurrence. There is no doubt that nearly all the epidemics of smallpox in country towns, and much of the typhus and similar diseases, have their origin in New York. I have in my hand letters from all parts of the State confirming this statement. They strikingly illustrate the want of a good sanitary police in New York, and the power of a great commercial centre to scatter disease broadcast over the country.
A few of these cases will abundantly illustrate the point:
Dr. J. S. Sprague, of Cooperstown, Otsego County, reports the occurrence of twenty-six cases of smallpox in that town, communicated by one person in October, 1860, who took the disease at a hotel in our city, in which a person with the disease had recently died. He was a merchant, and came to the city on business.
Dr. C. C. F. Gay, of Buffalo, reports the case of a female, who arrived from New York in November, 1860, and was removed from the cars of the Erie Railroad to the State Line Road, and proceeded westward. As was afterward ascertained, she had smallpox, and communicated the disease at Columbus, Ohio, where there were three deaths produced by it. Four deaths were directly traceable to this exposure, viz.: three milkmen and one baggage man, all of whom came in contact with the sick woman.
W. T. Babbitt mentions the case of a youngman who took the disease in this city at a hotel where it was prevailing, at which he stopped while on a visit here, in whom the disease appeared after his return to Olean, in Cattaraugus County.
Dr. M. Jarvis, of Canestota, Madison County, relates the case of a man who visited this city with horses for sale, and was attacked with symptoms of smallpox some ten days after his return to Smithfield, in that county, who communicated the disease to his family, from whom it spread to others in that and, also, in a neighboring town.
Dr.C. M. Noble, of Waverley, Delaware County, mentions the case of a merchant of that place, who came to this city with his wife, and went to one of our most frequented hotels. Being very much fatigued, they retired to the room providedSmallpox in aHotel Bedroomfor them without any particular examination of it—but found in the morning that they had been put in a room from which a patient with smallpox had just been removed, without its having been cleansed. The gentleman was seized with a malignant form of that disease after his return home. Two deaths and six cases of smallpox and varioloid resulted from this case.
Dr. S. W. Turner, of Chester, Connecticut,gives also two cases, one of smallpox and one of varioloid, in that and a neighboring place, which could be traced to this city.
Dr. Snow, the vigilant Health Officer of Providence, R. I., states that smallpox is rarely known in that city, except when imported from New York.
Icould repeat these details until it was shown that nearly every town in the State, and nearly every city in the country, has been inoculated by New York with this most loathsome disease. The most striking and most melancholy instances ofNew York Inoculatesthe Nationthe free dissemination of contagion are found in the army, where whole regiments have been stricken with smallpox through infected clothing manufactured at the homes of the poor, where the disease was prevailing. But these are facts too well known to every medical man, and even to the community, to require further illustration.
What terror smallpox creates in country towns when it attacks its first victim, you very well know. The house where it occurs is quarantined, and not unfrequently the sufferer is deserted by his friends, and left to recover or die, as the case may be. Business with the country is often suspended by the placards posted upon the highways, with the terrifying word “Smallpox”upon them, and a finger pointing ominously to the town. In nine cases out of ten, another finger should point toward New York, as the source of the pestilence.
It has been estimated by a competent observer, that every case of smallpox in a country town costs, by derangement of business alone, more money than is annually expended upon its public schools. If we add to this pecuniary loss the feverish excitement and popular apprehension, and the sufferings and probable death of the victim from want of proper care, we may but indifferently estimate the cost to the country of the prevalence of this disease.
Now, this diffusion of contagion from New York, we contend, is unnecessary. Every well-informed medical man knows that we may have a sanitary police so vigilant, so efficient and so powerful, that it will not only preserve the public health, but prevent the spread of disease therefrom. We hold, therefore, that you are not only called upon to protect the people of the City of New York from contagious disease, but equally that you are bound to protect the people of the State from dissemination of pestilence by every legislative safeguard which sanitary science can suggest.
TheSanitary Committee of the Board of Health, during the prevalence of cholera in 1849, remark in their report:
“The labors of your committee, during theInefficiency ofHealth Organizationspast appalling season of sickness and death, and the awful scenes of degradation, misery, and filth developed to them by their researches, have brought into full view the fact that we have no sanitary police worthy of the name; that we are unprotected by that watchful regard over the public health which common sense dictates to be necessary for the security of our lives, the maintenance of the city’s reputation, and the preservation of the interests of the inhabitants.”
Thisis a perfectly truthful statement of the present condition of New York. Practically, it is a city without any sanitary government. In its growth it is developing the natural history of a city that utterly ignores all rules and regulations which tend toWithout SanitaryGovernmentmake the homes of its people pleasant and healthy. It is the only city in the civilized world which disregards the Platonic idea that in a model republic medical men should be selected to preserve and promote the public health. Its board of health, the mayor and common council, is an unwieldly body. Its commissioners of health have limited powers, and are equally incompetent.
TheCity Inspector’s department, which alone has the machinery for sanitary inspection and surveillance, is a gigantic imposture. Of its forty-four health wardens, whose duty it should be to make house-to-house inspections, searching out the causeThe City Inspector’sDepartmentof disease, and using every known agency for the control and suppression of epidemics, many are liquor dealers, and all are grossly ignorant. Not one has any knowledge of medical subjects, nor dare they freely visit such diseases as smallpox, typhus, or cholera.
During this entire voluntary inspection, extending over six months, health wardens have rarely been known to visit infected quarters, although smallpox, fever, etc., etc., have been prevalent, and the city has been in a most disgracefully filthy condition. A single health warden recently ventured to visit a house where smallpox existed in an upper room; he sent for the attendant, and when she appeared, ordering her not to approach him, he gave the following as the best means of prevention: “Burn camphor on the stove, and hang bags of camphor about the necks of the children.”
To what depth of humiliation must that community have descended, which tolerates as its sanitary officers men who are not only utterly disqualified by education, business, and moralcharacter, but who have not even the poor qualification of courage to perform their duties. But perhaps the most decisive proof of the utter and hopeless inefficiency of our multiform health arrangements is found in the fact that all the evils from which we now suffer have grown up under their care. A late City Inspector thus emphatically gave expression to the popular feeling in regard to existing organizations:
“With such a system, can there be a wonder that the sanitary condition of the city is not improved? * * * Nor must the consideration be kept from view, that the members of the common council, the board of health, and commissioners of health are all, from the manner of their appointment, subject to partisan influence. To expect a perfect sanitary system, under such a condition of things, is to expect an impossibility.”
Themedical officer of health for the City of London, a gentleman of large experience, thus defines a health organization capable of answering the demands of a large and growing town: “The object of this organization lies in a word: inspection, inspection ofSanitaryInspectionthe most constant, most searching, most intelligent, and most trustworthy kind, is that in which the provisional management of our sanitary affairs must essentially consist.” The results of thiswork of voluntary sanitary inspection which I have before me prove on every page the truth of the above statement. No health organization without daily inspection would have any efficiency.
Of the value of such thorough inspection in the suppression of epidemics, and in the prevention of disease, there are abundant examples. The people of a populous town of England, becoming alarmed at the approach of cholera in 1849, organized a corps of inspectors, whose duty it was to visit from house to house, and inquire for cases of premonitory diarrhoea, and when found to apply the remedy at once. The result was that cholera did not visit that town. The same systematic house-to-house visitation was adopted in some poor districts of London in 1854, and there was an almost complete exemption of those parts of the city, while some quarters of the wealthy, which were not under such surveillance, suffered severely.
Butit is essential that this inspection should be by thoroughly qualified medical men, and it must consist in a house-to-house visitation. Disease must be sought for, found, its incipient history completely made out, the causes upon which it dependsInspection MustBe Thoroughreported, and its remedy suggested. Every case of death should be visited, and all the circumstances attending the developmentof the disease, if it belong to the preventable class, should be rigidly investigated and reported, in order that the central bureau may apply the proper remedy.
FEVER-BREEDING STAGNANT WATER, EIGHTH AVENUE, BETWEEN 75TH AND 76TH STREETS, 1865
FEVER-BREEDING STAGNANT WATER, EIGHTH AVENUE, BETWEEN 75TH AND 76TH STREETS, 1865
Striking examples of the value of medical sanitary inspection are furnished by this voluntary organization. One inspector found diarrhoeal affections very prevalent in a settlement in an up-town ward, and for a long time was baffled in his efforts to discover the cause. He was finally led to examine the water of a neighboring well, which the people used. This water appeared to be of an excellent quality, but on examination by Prof. Draper, it was found to contain a large amount of organic matter, derived either from a seweror privy. Prof. Draper pronounced it liquid poison. The mystery was at once solved, and the proper remedy suggested.
In another instance a very contagious disease was found in a tenant-house, and after a long course of inquiry it was at length discovered that a washer-woman, living in the basement, had taken in sailors’ clothing. The sailors were found, the ship visited from which they came, and there the disease was found. None but medical men can prosecute such investigations with success, or suggest the proper remedy. If such a corps of sanitary inspectors were daily patrolling their districts, visiting from house to house, searching out sanitary evils, advising and aiding the people in the adoption of preventive measures, no epidemics of smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, or cholera would ever gain more than a transient foothold. The sanitary inspector would truly become an officer of health and would be everywhere welcome.
Theremedy for our evils must be apparent; and this remedy is suggested in such terse unqualified language by the City Inspector above quoted, that I call the attention of the committee especially to this remark, as a proper guide in your deliberations.TheRemedyIn the City Inspector’s report for 1861 we find the following:
“The stay of pestilence, to be effectual,must be prompt, and equally prompt must be the interposition of barriers against the introduction of disease, which may be kept back, but, once introduced, can with difficulty be checked or extirpated. For these reasons, there should be a power existing in other hands that may be ready to be used at the moment the exigency may arise.” * * * “The remedy, apparent to every one, must consist in the adoption of laws transferring the power of sanitary regulations to some other authority of a different order of instruction in sanitary science.” * * * “The first groundwork of reform, in the opinion of the undersigned, is to bestow upon some other body, differently constituted, all power over the sanitary affairs of the city; and, until this is done, all other proposals of reform will be deprived of their essentially beneficial features. To escape present complications is the first great point to be gained; and this point secured, simplicity, promptness, and efficiency may be substituted for inefficiency, complication, and delay.”
Accepting this as the first step in reform, the practical question arises: How shall that body be constituted to which is to be confided the sanitary interests of New York?
Ifthe experience of other large cities is of any value, or, indeed, if we rely simply on common sense, the following are indispensableprerogatives in any well-organized health board:
1. It should be independent of all political influence and above all partisan control.
2. It should combine executive ability with a profound knowledge of disease and the proper measures of prevention. To this end the board should be composed in partAn EfficientHealth Boardof men especially accustomed to the dispatch of business, and in part of medical men of great skill and experience.
3. It should have a corps of skilled medical officers as inspectors, which should be the eyes, the ears, in a word, the senses of the board, in every part of the city, searching out disease, investigating the causes which give rise to it, the conditions under which it exists, the means of its propogation, and the most effectual mode of its suppression.
4. It should have a close alliance with the police, which must be its arm of power in the prompt and efficient execution of its orders.