Paradoxical as it may seem, there is, notwithstanding the appropriation every year for the New York City Board of Health of over one million dollars, a prohibitive tax on bath-tubs and water-closets--that is, on cleanliness--prohibitive on all homes except those of the wealthy. Is it to be wondered at that contagious diseases are prevalent, especially during the winter months, and that we have so many acute and chronic maladies? Let me make a suggestion here for the serious consideration of our city fathers: Reduce the appropriation for the Board of Health to two hundred thousand and give the other eight hundred thousand to the Department of Water Supply, so as to abolish the tax on water-closets and bath-tubs. If every citizen of New York could have all the water he needed for cleanliness and comfort, there would be little excuse for the existence of such a body as the Board of Health; its existence would then be more honorable than onerous. Furthermore, the city, as a corporate body, should manufacture bath-tubs and water-closets, and furnish them at cost. Thus would it insure a great stride toward the health of its own citizens. When the disease-producing microbe becomes scarce, the occupation of the Health Board pathologist will be gone. Hold! Could he not devote his time profitably to studying the habits of health-producing microbes--for there _are_ such? Microbes are absolutely necessary for higher forms of existence, it being now well known that some microbes are destructive or pathological and that others are constructive or physiological. Is it not much wiser to spend our millions of dollars for the prevention of disease than for quarantining it? Inducing, and even compelling, people to be clean is a far better policy than to compel them to be vaccinated. Now, we pay the Board of Health many thousands of dollars a year simply for making cultures of disease-producing bacteria so that antidotes may be found. The pictures and history of these bacteria are published in many large volumes, costing the city several hundred thousand dollars a year. Scientific as this practice undoubtedly is, it is very expensive--and needless.