Since sanitary science had its origin during the present century, it will be helpful to assign a definite period for its birth. Not that any one would have the temerity to dogmatically assert that the science came into being at a fixed date, but rather to fix a period of time when the conditions working through the ages were so shaped that, perforce, the problems of sanitation would thereafter be treated more in a scientific and less in an empirical method than before. This time is associated with the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria of England, since the first Act of Parliament for the registration of births, marriages, and deaths was passed in 1837, and the beginning made of accurately gathering information which is to the sanitarian what the pulse is to the physician. With his fingers on this tell-tale of the flow of the heart-blood of the nation, he is enabled to determine whether disease is above or below the normal, the character of the disease that abounds, and its whereabouts. Knowing where to find any disease in excess, he can study the conditions and surroundings, comparing them with other places, whether afflicted in like manner or, more favored, free from the disease. By means of these vital statistics he can compare year with year, and tell with a degree of exactness heretofore impossible whether any disease is increasing or decreasing; he can lay his returns by the side of the figures of the meteorologist and learn if the weather has any influence on the death-rate; he can follow the results of his efforts to improve the condition of the people and vindicate his expenditure of the public money by pointing to the reduced mortality rate. It may seem to be a gruesome task for every physician in the land to send to the proper official a notice of each death and of each patient suffering from a disease apt to be communicated to some one else; and almost ghoulish for the officer to sit at his desk, day after day, and catalogue and tabulate these returns. But it is only a modern version of the old riddle of Samson, out of the bitter came forth the sweet; for without this, much of the progress of sanitary science would be well-nigh impossible.