Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/343

Rh vaccinated or revaccinated as may be necessary, and are held for the necessary time under official observation. Prior to 1866 free vaccination was obtainable only upon application to public dispensaries; now a corps of expert medical inspectors, by constant house-to-house visitation, offer vaccination to all and urge its acceptance. With the great decrease in typhus fever and small-pox official attention has been specially directed to scarlet fever, diphtheria, and minor contagious diseases; a hospital has been erected for the reception of cases that can not be isolated and properly treated elsewhere; and the same rules and regulations have been applied in respect to reports of cases by physicians, inspection of premises, isolation or removal to hospital, and disinfection of rooms, bedding, and clothing, with results so satisfactory and promising that there is reason to hope for a continued decrease in the sickness and mortality from these dangerous diseases.

8. —The frequent inspections, by a corps of experts composed of physicians and chemists, have so improved the supply of milk brought to the city and offered for sale, that this important article is now rarely found diluted by water or otherwise impure. The markets for meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables are also regularly inspected, and the large amount of these articles seized by sanitary officers from time to time and removed to the offal docks as unfit for human food have improved the supply, checked the sale of whatever is unwholesome, and secured more care and caution on the part of dealers and consumers. Chemical analyses of various articles used as food and in its preparation have also resulted in the detection of frauds and the correction of abuses which formerly were not the subject of official interference or action.

9. —The plumbing and drainage of tenement-houses have already been noticed, but the improvement of private dwellings in these particulars is not less important. Sanitary engineering during the past twenty-five years has become an important branch of science; in practical plumbing there have been remarkable improvements in material, fixtures, and workmanship; householders have been educated in the importance of excluding sewer-gas, odors, and dampness from their dwellings; and competent official supervision of new plumbing, and correction of defective work in houses erected at periods more or less distant, have removed many of the dangers which formerly threatened life and health in the abodes of the rich and the poor.

Several departments of the municipal government in the performance of their duties as prescribed by law have greatly contributed to the sanitary improvement of the metropolis during the last-quarter of a century. The cobble-stone pavements have generally been replaced with block stone, and recently asphalt has