Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/874

 morning the entire line of buildings was leveled, and one of the most outrageous abuses that had grown up under political protection was abolished.

Among the numerous sanitary reforms secured by the present Board of Health, may be mentioned the system of gratuitous house-to-house vaccination established in 1874, which has already resulted in vaccinating over 360,000 persons, and the complete suppression of small-pox; the reform in the construction of tenement-houses; the employment of a special corps of fifty physicians during the five hot and damp weeks which occur in the latter part of July and the early part of August, and which were formerly so fatal to infants, killing sometimes eight hundred or one thousand in a week. The physicians make a house-to-house visitation, prescribe for the sick children, supply medicines, and distribute printed directions among the mothers. The Health Department in its varied work of recording the marriages, births, and deaths, preventing and caring for contagious diseases, disinfecting, sanitary inspection, and the abatement of nuisances, meat and milk inspection, employs a corps of one hundred and thirty men, besides the special summer corps of fifty physicians and the fruit-inspectors and extra disinfectors—requiring an annual appropriation of $250,000. The return for this large expenditure is seen in the remarkable improvement in the public health. In 1866, fifty-three per cent, of the total deaths were of children under five years of age. This percentage has steadily diminished, till it is now less than forty-six, which proves an actual saving of four thousand children's lives in a single year, to say nothing of all the sickness prevented in our population of over 1,100,000.

The sanitary chemistry of water has been a special subject of investigation with Dr. Chandler, and he has been relied upon to decide important questions with regard to the selection of water for supplying Albany, Yonkers, and several other cities. He has also been engaged in several important investigations on the pollution of water by factories, and the prevention of boiler incrustations.

During the past summer Dr. Chandler was made chairman of a committee to draw up a scheme for disinfection, to be adopted by the National Board of Health. The other members of the committee were Drs. Vanderpoel, Janeway, Henry Draper, Barker, and Remsen.

Professor Chandler's most elaborate chemical work has been the investigation of American mineral waters. With the aid of his assistants he has analyzed sixteen of the springs and artesian wells at Saratoga, besides many more sulphur and other springs at Chittenango, Florida, N. Y., and elsewhere.

Dr. Chandler, in connection with his brother. Professor W. H. Chandler, of the Lehigh University, started a monthly journal of chemistry, called "The American Chemist." It contained the results of many researches, and was a valuable periodical for those engaged