Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/342

328, or dreaming citizens in midsummer nights, ceased to exist, when privy-vaults were generally banished from New York.

7. —The prevalence of contagious diseases, and the absence of official care and control a quarter of a century since, is illustrated by the following extract from the report of the Council of Hygiene, 1865 (page 137), upon the sanitary survey made in the previous year:

"With typhus fever and small-pox in nearly ten thousand domiciles of the poor and the ignorant, where every circumstance favored the localization of infection and the propagation of disease, and where gross nuisances and criminal negligence of cleanliness, ventilation, and medical police demanded the presence of intelligent authority, it is justly concluded that the work of sanitary improvement should, if possible, be enforced by legal authority. The records of many a fever-nest during this survey have shown that the legislative and judicial power of an intelligent Board of Health is indispensable. In some instances the incursions of fever into crowded tenements ravaged every family, and not infrequently broke up large families, making fatal victims of the parents and pauperizing their surviving dependants; often the fever has swept through the front and rear domiciles of populous tenement-houses, and thence has been widely diffused by the constantly changing tenants."

The result of official sanitary care and of improved methods is demonstrated by the vital statistics of that period and of the present time. The number of deaths from small-pox was 78 in 1863, 394 in 1864, and 674 in 1865; and from typhus fever 420 in 1863, 764 in 1864, and 501 in 1865. With a population more than doubled, the number of deaths from small-pox were 81 in 1888, one in 1889, and two in 1890, and from typhus fever four in 1888, none in 1889, and none in 1890. The average number of deaths from typhus fever for the ten years ending with 1865 was 291, and for the ten years ending with 1890 was 30, and the average number from small-pox for the same periods were 372 and 92 respectively. These remarkable results must be attributed to the improved sanitary condition of the city generally; to the prompt reports of all cases of contagious disease by attending physicians; to the immediate removal of the sick to hospitals by the health officers, when advisable; to the sanitary inspection of the premises where sickness has occurred, and the thorough disinfection of sick-rooms and of infected bedding and clothing; and to the new and commodious hospitals for contagious diseases erected and controlled by the sanitary authorities, in which the sick are completely isolated and receive the best care and medical attendance. In cases of small-pox, to prevent the spread of the disease, the persons who have been exposed to the contagion or reside in the immediate vicinity are