Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/870

836 Three evenings a week, all winter, Chandler lectured there year after year. The active exertions of the faculty and the trustees, and the interest manifested by the New York druggists, have built up from this small beginning a most flourishing school of three hundred pupils, which is able now to own a fine building, with laboratory and lecture halls.

At the death of Professor St. John, Professor Chandler succeeded to his chair of Chemistry and Medical Jurisprudence in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, which he now holds. Here his voice has always been raised in favor of a much more exacting system of medical education, and has not been without effect, in the recent radical improvements which have been adopted in this institution, involving an extension of the session to seven months, written examinations, etc.

In 1866 Professor Chandler was invited by the Metropolitan Board of Health to do some gratuitous chemical work. He accepted the invitation, and so impressed the Commission with the importance of his work that, at the end of the year, they created the office of Chemist for him, which he held till 1873, when he was appointed by Mayor Havemeyer President of the Board. In 1877 he was reappointed, for six years, by Mayor Ely. As Chemist to the Board of Health, food and water supply were made the subjects of careful investigation. The absurdity of the annual complaints with regard to the quality of the Croton was clearly established, as was also the danger of drinking water from any of the city wells. It was also shown that the popular belief in the wholesale adulteration of the common articles of food, such as flour, bread, sugar, etc., was unfounded. The shameful condition of the milk-supply was pointed out, and it was shown that for every three quarts of milk there was added at least one quart of water, to say nothing of the frequent removal of a considerable portion of the cream. The fact that most of the condensed-milk companies skimmed the milk before they concentrated it and sold the cream separately was also published. A fraud on the citizens, amounting to at least ten thousand dollars a day, was traced to the milk-dealers.

After Dr. Chandler was made President of the Board of Health, he made the milk question his special study, and carried on a successful warfare against the dishonest dealers. He rightly assumed that, as milk was the chief diet of the one hundred and thirty thousand children in New York, under five years of age, it was the most important article of food for municipal supervision. His reforms were not accomplished without very sharp fighting. The milk-dealers organized, and secured the services of lawyers and chemists, who attacked both the laws and the chemical methods. After prolonged litigation, the Court of Appeals affirmed the ordinances of the sanitary code, and the lactometer as used by Dr. Chandler and his inspectors received the scientific endorsement of the best chemists in the country, including