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

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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$G(> lulolily of the individual contrihutors tlian to the singular executive skill and i.ersoiml lulluence which lias made Lansing the focus of all these nn|»ulses. Jt 1 were a Michigan physician 1 should count it somewhat of a distinction to he a local contrihutor to tln*se reports, for the comhined ohser\ations of your one hundred or so observers are more exact in their indications than those of a thousand physicians returning certilicates of Not long ago I had occasion to make from the experience of thirteen boards of health a composite curve representing the annual diphtheria mortality by months. C)ne hundred and twenty-live thousand death cer- tificates entered into the composite, and of the thirteen separate curves none resembled the composite so nearly as a Michigan curve from the sickness reports. 1 am inclined to believe that the normal seasonal rise and fall of diphtheria would be as well shown from the weeklv sickness reports to the Michigan board of health as from the conibined^nortality returns of the country. Michigan exjierience aflirms it to be as true in practice as it is in theory that one hundred representative jiliysicians in active jiractice will cacli see whatever sickness is jiresent in each locality, and will be abb* to report year in and year out a fixed ]»roi»ortion of all the disease in the state. Unlike mortality statistics, statistics of sickness do not retpiire to be comjilete. Their use is that of a sample for analysis. Tln^v fur- nish data for reasoning, not arithmetical results. It is dillicult for a man who is sensible of his own fallibility to reali/.e that his observations with those of a hundred other e(]ually fallible men will yield results id’ un- varying accuracy, but it is so. “Jf,” says Doctor Raker, “the weekly re- jiorts of ii sullicient nnnibei' of competent observers, well distributed over a given territory, ])roduce results which are fpiite consistent from ^yeek to week, from month to month, and from year to year, such statis-- tics must be accepted under the law of jirobabilities as sound data.” A recent stei) in preventive medicine promises to bring reports of sick- ness within easier reach of some of us. The establishment of public bacteriological laboratories, rendei’ing fre<‘ assistance to phvsicians in the diagnosis of infections diseases, creates a new liond of mutual interest between sanitarians and jiractising physicians. Such a bond has hitherto been lacking, and public health jiractitionei's should h‘t no jiait of so important an advantage slij) from them. Tn Maryland W(‘ Iiojk^ to keep the physicians reminded of their obligations to tin* state by asking at the beginning of every apjilication for bacteriological diagnosis, “.Vre you up to date with your reports of births, deaths, and infectious dis- eases?” The short history of state and municipal biological laboratories has abundantly justified their existence. They have produced a copious literature which is of current use among clinicians and teachers, and have developed an army of workers who exert a strong influence on the medical thought of the day. Aid to private citizens and to medical men, valuable though it is, makes but one ite^” credit of a public bac- teriological laboratory. The larger profits are in the device and control of preventive measures, and in the habitual use of timely information, of accumulated records, of re])(‘ated obsei'vatand of opportunities for experimental work. The criticism which lias fallen upon some of the laboratories, if it be just, convicts tlimn of nothing more serious than$