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not only saved the lives of thousands of citizens, but has also caused the population to increase to a point much beyond any which it would have reached had the city continued to use, unpurified, the sewagepolluted water of the Merrimac River. demonstration of this sort shows how easily the diminishing increase of population under a lower birth rate may sometimes be counteracted without resort to that fishlike spawning which seems to be the only remedy of those who are terrified by 'race suicide,' so called. Moreover, it is hardly necessary to point out that such a diminishing death rate means a far more rapidly diminishing morbidity rate-in other words, it means a heightened working efficiency of the population as a whole, and it must not be forgotten that for most of the results obtained in the scientific purification of water supplies we are indebted to the science of engineering.

On the other hand, we must observe that engineering science, so far as water purification is concerned, is as yet only in its infancy and by no means thus far altogether satisfactory. In the United States, for example, in the last two or three years a number of epidemics of typhoid fever. have resulted from the defective operation or construction of municipal filters, and while much has been done, it is clear that much still remains to do. In this connection it should be said that public health science in the United States suffers constantly and severely from an unsatisfactory condition of the science and art of administration or government in many American cities. Public health works are too often neglected, delayed, mismanaged or built at extravagant cost, to the sanitary and economic damage of the people as a whole, and the tendency is far too common to place the care and operation of costly devices or systems in incompetent hands.

I can not here dwell, as long as I should like to do, upon the mutual relations of public health science and the sciences of legislation and administration. Speaking of my own country alone, I must confess that we are still very deficient in the applications of these sciences. We have not even a national board of health, although we have, fortunately, in the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service a strong substitute for one. The peculiarities of our democratic and republican government have hitherto made it impossible for the people of the United States to secure either from federal authorities or from more local sources that measure of paternal sanitary and hygienic protection which they ought to have, and it is the duty of every American worker in this field to bend his energies toward a better organization of the public health service in every direction, municipal and state as well as national. The appointment in 1886 of a distinguished hydraulic engineer to membership on the State Board of Health in Massachusetts marked an epoch, so far as America is concerned, in both sanitary legislation and administration. This appointment was a formal recognition on the part of the public of the necessity of a larger proportion of engineering science in matters relating to the public health, and the results have justified the new procedure. It is now, fortunately becoming less rare in America to secure the services of engineers upon such boards and there can be no question that participation of the expert laity with medical men is likely to be extended, probably far beyond our present ideas.

In a notable discourse before the International Medical Congress at the Centennial Exposition held at Philadelphia in 1876, Dr. Henry P. Bowditch, of Boston, one of the pioneers of hygiene and sanitation in America, divided the century then

closing, as to its relation to public health science, into three periods, the first, from 1776 to 1832, a period of reliance upon authority and upon drugs; the second, from 1832 to 1869, a period of true scientific observation; the third, from 1869 onwards, an epoch in which the medical profession is aided by the laity and state. hygiene is inaugurated. Dr. Bowditch has much to say of the desirability of a wider. cooperation of the laity in state hygiene

and remarks: 'In all that tends to the promotion of state hygiene hereafter the laity will naturally and cordially cooperate with the [medical] profession.' The history of public health science shows Dr. Bowditch's prediction to have been well grounded. The names of John Howard and Captain Cook in the eighteenth century, and of Edwin Chadwick, John Simon and Louis Pasteur (not to mention a host of lesser workers) in the nineteenth century, show conclusively that public health science has been, even from the start, by no means confined to medical men. may go further and say that even when forwarded by medical men these have seldom been busy practitioners. Sir George Baker and Jenner were, it is true, of this class, but not Pettenkofer or Koch or Ross or Billings or Reed.*

Reflections of this sort naturally lead to a consideration of the reciprocal relations of public health science and the science of education. I do not need to dwell upon the beneficial effects of public health science upon the hygiene and sanitation of school children or school houses. These benefits have long been emphasized by sanitarians and sanitary reformers, and are sufficiently obvious. The reverse of the picture, however, is by no means so well

"During the course of an epidemic physicians are too busy to make observations which require much time or care, or to make more than brief notes."-J. S. Billings.

understood.

Unless one is familiar with

the facts, it is difficult to conceive how little impression the splendid progress which the last fifty years have witnessed in public health science has as yet made upon the curriculum of education. From top to bottom and from bottom to top the schools, whether primary, grammar, high, normal, technical, medical or any other class, are recreant, inasmuch as they neglect almost wholly any adequate training of their pupils in the principles of public health science, which are confessedly of such profound importance to mankind. There is, to be sure, just now a popular wave of enthusiasm touching the extermination of tuberculosis, but in the United States, at any rate, both schools and universities are singularly negligent of their most elementary duties in this direction. Yet if what I have said before is true, if the laity are to participate from this time forward with medical men in sanitary and hygienic legislation and administration, if engineers and medical men in particular are to serve upon boards of health or in other executive positions connected with public works, then, surely, it is the duty of the science of education to lend its powerful aid and not to fail to save the lives and health of the people as these can be saved to-day, but always to promote that public health and that large measure of consequent happiness which can probably be more easily and quickly accomplished in this way than in any other.

As to the function of medical education and engineering education in respect to the dissemination of public health science, I shall say only a word. In spite of the reiteration by medical men of their belief in the importance of hygiene and preventive medicine as a part of the equipment of the medical profession, it is a significant fact that in America even the

best medical schools devote very little time to any adequate instruction in these subjects. It may be that this is wise and that the pressing necessities of practical medicine forbid any extended instruction in public health science. I am willing to believe, if I must, that this may be the case; but if it is, then the community must look for the most part elsewhere than to medical men for adequate investigation, legislation and administration of public health science. Medical men, must, of course, always participate in the work, in connection, particularly, with the control of epidemics and in those forms of preventive medicine which have to do with vaccines, serums and other means of modifying the vital resistance of the human body. But as regards the care and control of the environment, medical knowledge is not indispensable, and the entrance of the engineer and the sanitary expert upon the field, as foretold by Dr. Bowditch nearly twenty years ago, is today a conspicuous, and probably a wholesome, fact. As to the attitude of engineering education toward public health science there can be no question. If what I have said before is true, then engineers are bound in the future to take constantly a larger and more important part in public health work, and must be informed, and if possible trained, accordingly. Moreover, as regards both medicine and engineering, the problem is by no means insoluble, for a very short course of instruction rightly given would easily inculcate the necessary fundamental principles, while electives or post-graduate work might enable those few whose tastes led them in this direction to investigate and specialize and more thoroughly prepare themselves for public service.

I can not treat, nor do I need to treat, as thoroughly as I would be glad to do, the mutual relations existing between medical

science, especially the science of medical bacteriology, and public health science. These are already sufficiently obvious and well known. From time immemorial medical men have served, often devotedly and sometimes heroically, in the cause of public health science. I take it, however, that since we have in this congress and in our own department a section of preventive. medicine, I may pass over without comment this part of my subject.

As regards sanitary bacteriology, however, the relations existing between this and public health science are so fundamental, so extensive and so important, not only on the medical, but also on the engineering side, that although we have also in this congress under the department of biology, as is entirely proper, a section of bacteriology, I may linger at this point for one moment. The bacteria and other microscopic forms of plant and animal. life, all of which are conveniently included under the term microbes, have so lately begun to be understood and appreciated that we must still emphasize their extreme importance. The discoveries of the botanists and zoologists and revelations of the microscopists in this domain are comparable, in their importance to public health science, with nothing less than the revelations of the telescope to astronomy. Astronomy had, indeed, existed long before the invention of the telescope, and public health science, as we have shown above, had its beginnings nearly a century before. any considerable progress had been made in micro-biology. in micro-biology. But it is not too much

to say that the developments in microbiology since Pasteur began his work have not only revolutionized our ideas of the nature of the infectious diseases, but have also placed in our hands the key of their complete control.

Concerning the relations of physiology

to public health science, I must not fail to speak. Here is a field absolutely ripe for the harvest, but one in which the harvesters are as yet very few. I have lately had occasion to examine somewhat carefully the present condition of our knowledge of personal hygiene-which is nothing more (and should be nothing less) than the applications of physiologial science to the conduct of human life-with the result that I have been greatly impressed with its vast possibilities and promise. Man is a gregarious animal, and mankind is to-day crowding into cities as perhaps never before. Moreover, the industrial and commercial age in which we live is characterized to an extraordinary degree by the sedentary life. Yet the sedentary life is almost unavoidably an abnormal life, or at least it is a life very different from that lived by most of our ancestors. In the sedentary life the maintenance of a high degree of physiological resistance apparently becomes difficult, and if the vital resistance of the community in general is lowered then the public health is directly and unfavorably affected, so that considerations of personal hygiene have a direct bearing upon the science of public health.

There are, to be sure, interesting and suggestive symptoms of a wholesome reaction, in America, at any rate, against the evils of the sedentary life. Parks and open spaces are being liberally provided; public and private gymnasiums are rapidly coming into being; public playgrounds are thrown open in many of our cities, free of expense to the laboring, but, nevertheless, often sedentary, population; vacations are more than ever the fashion; sports and games are everywhere receiving increasing attention; while public baths and other devices for the promotion of personal hygiene are more and more coming into being. All this is as it should be, but all is as yet only

a beginning. Here, again, the science of education is sadly at fault and in the direction of educational reform as regards personal hygiene lies immense opportunity for a contribution to public health science.

The science of statistics, which has done. great service in public health science in the past, is likely to do much more in the future. Without accurate statistics of population, mortality and the causes of sickness and death, the science of epidemiology is impotent, and the efficiency or inefficiency of public health measures can not be determined. And yet in ignorant hands statistics may be worse than useless. It is a matter for congratulation to Americans that we now have in Washington a census bureau permanently established and under expert supervision, but until the various states and cities of the United States follow this excellent example of their Federal Government, one of the most important aids to public health science will continue to be wanting, as is unfortunately too often the case to-day not only in America, but in many other parts

of the civilized world.

WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE

OF TECHNOLOGY.

SCIENTIFIC BOOKS.

Manual of the Trees of North America (Exclusive of Mexico). By CHARLES SPRAGUE SARGENT, director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, author of the Silva of North America; with six hundred and fortyfour illustrations from drawings by Charles Edward Faxon. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin and Company; Cambridge, The Riverside Press. 1905. Pp. 24826,

octavo.

A few years ago Professor Sargent brought to a successful close his monumental work, The Silva of North America,' in fourteen massive quarto volumes, and including descriptions and figures of 585 species of trees.

While this must for centuries be the standard work on our native trees, its bulk and cost preclude its use elsewhere than in the herbarium, museum or library, and it was imperative that the same author should prepare a handy field (or rather, forest) manual which should give to a much larger number of people the opportunity of studying our forest trees. This has now been done in an admirable manner in the Manual which made its appearance some time in March of the present

year.

The book opens with a synopsis of the sixtyone families of plants included, the sequence being that of Engler and Prantl's 'Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien,' and this is followed by an analytical key to the families, based on the characters of the leaves. Then follows the descriptive manual proper, in which after a clear and pretty full characterization of each family there is given a conspectus or analytical key to the North American genera. The characters of each genus are set forth much more fully than they are in the usual botanical manuals, and a paragraph is usually appended giving geographical, numerical and economic data. A convenient key enables the student to readily find the particular species in which he is interested.

The specific descriptions leave nothing to be desired, usually including full descriptions of the leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, the tree as a whole, its winter buds, bark and wood, and are followed by concise accounts of their natural geographical distribution, and the extent of their cultivation for ornamental and other purposes. With each species is a figure of the characteristic features of the species, usually the foliage, flowers and fruit. By means of these figures alone one can identify nearly every species.

The book is thus thoroughly satisfactory, and must at once become a standard among systematic manuals. It will appeal to the general botanist as a distinct and notable contribution to the literature of systematic botany, and at the same time it will be recognized by students of forestry as an indispensable handbook. For the latter, in this day of forestry schools and forestry courses of study in the

colleges and universities, it is indeed fortunate that this manual has made its appearance. Without it North American dendrology was a most difficult subject for both professor and student, on account of the scattered and uncoordinated descriptions in the botanical manuals-the 'Silva' being quite too expensive a work for every-day use by students. This difficulty is now wholly removed by the publication of the manual.

Looking over the families which include North American trees, one finds that the conifers number 90 species and varieties; the palms, 10; Liliaceae, 9; the Juglandaceae, 15; Salicaceae, 32; Fagaceae, 52; Rosaceae, 169 (of which 132 are species of Crataegus); Leguminosae, 34; Aceraceae, 17; Cornaceae, 8; Ericaceae, 9; Oleaceae, 19. The generic and specific nomenclature is modern, so that one finds Tumion (instead of Torreya), Hicoria (instead of Carya), Toxylon (instead of Maclura), Malus (instead of Pyrus), Sassafras sassafras (instead of Sassafras officinale), and Catalpa catalpa (instead of Catalpa bignonioides). No attempt is made to cite synonyms, the author evidently assuming that the student might well trust him in the selection of the oldest available name. The author has added a handy glossary of technical terms, and the volume closes with a very full index in which English and Latin names are arranged in a single alphabetical series, thus avoiding the nuisance of two indexes, one for the common and another for the scientific names.

This book suggests to one that Professor Sargent is the man to give us a similar book devoted to the exotic trees (and probably shrubs also) of which so many are now given in this country.

CHARLES E. BESSEY.

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA.

SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ARTICLES. The Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology for May contains an article of 100 pages, entitled 'The Morphology of the Vertebrate Head from the Viewpoint of the Functional Divisions of the Nervous System,' by J. B. Johnston, of West Virginia University. The head problems' have recently re

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