Eaton, Dorman B. (Dorman Bridgman), 1823-1899; Public health -- New York (State) -- New York; Sanitation -- New York (State) -- New York
During this entire voluntary inspection, extending over six months,
health wardens have rarely been known to visit infected quarters,
although smallpox, fever, etc., etc., have been prevalent, and the city
has been in a most disgracefully filthy condition. A single health
warden recently ventured to visit a house where smallpox existed in an
upper room; he sent for the attendant, and when she appeared, ordering
her not to approach him, he gave the following as the best means of
prevention: “Burn camphor on the stove, and hang bags of camphor about
the necks of the children.”
To what depth of humiliation must that community have descended,
which tolerates as its sanitary officers men who are not only utterly
disqualified by education, business, and moral character, but who have
not even the poor qualification of courage to perform their duties. But
perhaps the most decisive proof of the utter and hopeless inefficiency
of our multiform health arrangements is found in the fact that all the
evils from which we now suffer have grown up under their care. A late
City Inspector thus emphatically gave expression to the popular feeling
in regard to existing organizations:
“With such a system, can there be a wonder that the sanitary condition
of the city is not improved? * * * Nor must the consideration be
kept from view, that the members of the common council, the board
of health, and commissioners of health are all, from the manner of
their appointment, subject to partisan influence. To expect a perfect
sanitary system, under such a condition of things, is to expect an
impossibility.”
[Sidenote: Sanitary Inspection]
The medical officer of health for the City of London, a gentleman
of large experience, thus defines a health organization capable of
answering the demands of a large and growing town: “The object of
this organization lies in a word: inspection, inspection of the most
constant, most searching, most intelligent, and most trustworthy kind,
is that in which the provisional management of our sanitary affairs
must essentially consist.” The results of this work of voluntary
sanitary inspection which I have before me prove on every page the
truth of the above statement. No health organization without daily
inspection would have any efficiency.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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