Proceedings of the quarter-centennial celebration of the establishment of the Michigan State Board of Health : held at Detroit, Michigan, August 9, 1898.
- Michigan. State Board of Health
- Date:
- 1898
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Proceedings of the quarter-centennial celebration of the establishment of the Michigan State Board of Health : held at Detroit, Michigan, August 9, 1898. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![In times so ripening -Tenner brought forth his imperishable thought, ami in the history of vaccination for the next lifty years the future of sanitary legislation was broadly outlined for two centuries. Hitherto human health had been of political concern only so far as military and naval operations depended for success upon the effectiveness of human tools. The more or less rational conjectures of the medical teachers of that day offered no firm basis of fact upon which might be built legisla- tion to protect the peaceful, home-keeping population. Here at length was a decisive conquest over a unit of disease, and toward the applica- tion, in express terms of law, of such a victory to the safety of the whole people fear and reason alike impelled. In respect of vaccination against small-pox, the principle is affirmed beyond controversy that the indi- vidual may be obliged, for the sake of the common welfare, to choose be- tween two alternatives: either to acquire immunity at the cost of an infection produced by design, or else give up his personal liberty for a period after each exposure to small-pox. This is the farthest reaching precedent which has yet appeared in the history of State Medicine. Since civilized nations began to incorporate this scientific procedure into law, it has everywhere by all men been believed that the prevention of small- pox is of general no less than of local concern. If it be a right function of law to prevent small-pox, then law need only wait for available means to j)revent other diseases. One article of the catholic creed of sanitation is that the health of the people is the charge of the State. The force of the older principle, that the health of the citizens is the care of the City, is not in this declaration diminished but augment(‘d, and with the growth of local sanitary government, the functions of central sanitary administration must broaden and deepen. A republican principle so well settled as to need no proclamation is the right to local self-government, and wherever this right is most loudly asserted in re- spect of sanitary matters, there will usually coincide the greatest need with the least exercise of self-government. Since the welfare .of ihe State can only be the resultant of the welfare of its component units, common sense will insist that the local administration of sanitary law be referred to some established form. Such has been the history of iill law, and nothing different can be expected of sanitary law. It is doubt- ful if there is yet anywhere a board of health which nearly approaches perfection, or if there will be such an example until the sanitary govern- ment of states shall be co-ordinated by national sanitary law, incarnati-d in a National Bureau of Health. Neither in science nor in politics do we find all things ready for the organization and equi])ment of such a board of health as could make serviceable all the ripe fruits of modern medicine. Nowhere has sanitary legislation grown up symmetrically. Legislatures have j)ut into law, without reference to previously constituted authority, the sanitary con- ceits of all sorts of reformers, moral, religions, ])hilanthropic, eduia- tional, commercial, industrial. The results of administration, thoinrh in many instances disappointing, have been on the whole so ])rofitable that one must in sj)ite of its redundancy rejoice in such extraordinary growth, as promising that exact knowledge concerning the causes and jirevention of disease will not advance much faster than law will follow. As a preliminary step toward the plane upon which the sanitary affairs of a state can be best administered, one would suggest the appointment of a commission to revise and reeinbody in a workable and understand-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22335213_0067.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
