Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/679

 A MODEL MUNICIPAL DEPARTMENT 655

of cholera having been brought to the port, Dr. Herman M. Biggs, who was then pathologist of the Health Department, urged the necessity of bacteriological diagnosis as the only sure test of this disease. Upon the request of the department, there- fore, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment made the necessary appropriation for a suitable laboratory, and upon the New York model many similar laboratories have since been estab- lished both in this country and abroad.

After some success in the diagnosis of cholera in 1893, the laboratory turned its attention to diphtheria, and the following year established the necessary plant for the production of the antitoxin used by the department. In 1894, also, studies were begun upon the bacteriology of tuberculosis, while in 1895 the treatment of diphtheria in tenement houses and the free distri- bution of antitoxin was started. Since then the work of the bacteriological laboratory has gone on steadily expanding, until now it is divided between a research laboratory proper, a diagnosis, a vaccine, and an antitoxin laboratory, as well as a large disinfecting plant. The general methods and the results of this bacteriological work, which has now become among the most important carried on by the Health Department, and one upon which it is largely dependent for its efficiency in the pre- vention and cure of contagious diseases, may best be described under its several different branches.

The research laboratory. This is a well-equipped laboratory for all kinds of research work which the department may wish to undertake. It is devoted to the testing of the vaccine and antitoxin prepared and used by the Board of Health, and to all kinds of research experiments. For this and other demonstra- tive work a little menagerie of live guinea pigs, rabbits, monkeys, etc., is maintained ; and from its studies the laboratory has shown that the virus of smallpox and vaccine cannot be of a bacterial nature. Dr. Park, the director of the laboratory, discovered that a monkey can always be inoculated with smallpox, but never with chicken pox, thus making known to the world the first sure test for a diagnosis of these diseases.

The laboratory has studied tuberculosis cultures obtained from human beings and cattle, It has made progress in methods of disinfection. One