Tangible evidence of the public spirit of Henry R. Gray is found in his service as chairman of the board of health and the radical and effective measures which he took in preventing the spread of a small-pox epidemic. He did equally efficient work in promoting sanitary conditions in Montreal along various lines and at the same time he occupied a prominent position as a representative of the pharmaceutical profession. He was born December 30, 1838, in Boston, Lincolnshire, England, and pursued his education at Standard Hill, Nottingham, the head master of the school being William Goodacre, the well known author of several standard educational works. He was afterward articled for five years to William March, chemist and apothecary, at Newark, England, and subsequently pursued a course of lectures on chemistry under the celebrated Roscoe in Manchester. Coming to Canada when twenty-one years of age, Mr. Gray established his business in Montreal in 1859 and for several years devoted his attention to the study of sanitary science and particularly to the question of the sanitation of cities. He was connected with every movement to improve the sanitary condition of Montreal and his labors were of far-reaching benefit. He became one of the originators of the Pharmaceutical Association of the province, of which he was elected secretary and later treasurer and vice president. He was next called to the presidency, serving for three consecutive years and also as a member of the board of examiners. He became one of the charter members of the Montreal College of Pharmacy and for two years was its president. In 1884 he was elected alderman of the St. Lawrence ward and soon afterward was unanimously chosen by the city council as chairman of the local board of health, serving in that difficult position during the whole of the disastrous epidemic of small-pox which devastated the city and province in 1885 and 1886. When the disease broke out and the death rate amounted to twenty-five per day, there was little civic organization to prevent the spread of disease or further the promotion of sanitary conditions. Vaccination was opposed, but Mr. Gray organized a vigorous campaign to stamp out the disease and obtained the passage of by-laws insisting on free and compulsory vaccination. He also organized a civic hospital and insisted on all the small-pox patients being sent to the isolation hospital. Through this and other emergency methods he allayed the general fear and stamped out the disease. It was in that year that he succeeded in getting a by-law through the city council requiring all household refuse to be cremated, and shortly afterward crematories were erected and a contract for five years’ collection and cremation given out.