Municipal sanitation in the United States / by Charles V. Chapin.

  • Charles V. Chapin
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Municipal sanitation in the United States / by Charles V. Chapin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    inland waters, in regard to the communicable diseases of animals, and in regard to quarantine and the registration of vital statistics, are very commonly reserved to the state. If not formally reserved, the state acts so efficiently and so much better than the local units that these matters are neglected by the latter. Not only does the state thus through its legislature direct certain sanitary affairs as above, but it employs its executive powers in the same fields. As will be seen in the discussion of these subjects, many states not only have elaborate laws concerning the adulteration of food, and quarantine, but directly control the administration of these laws through tie- agency of state appointed boards or officers. Dairy commissioners, state boards of cattle commissioners, state inspectors of food and state quarantine offi- cers are not uncommon, and the state board of health frequently is given executive control of any or all of these matters. The state sanitary organization which is at present established in all the states except Georgia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Wyoming, is the embodiment of the interest of the state in sanitary affairs. It is given more or less legislative and executive authority in such matters as experience has shown, or as is hoped, can be best controlled in this way; but take it all in all throughout the states, the state board of health is considered chiefly as an advisory board. It is not to meddle in local affairs any more than is necessary. In other words, the prin- ciple of local self-government in sanitary as in other affairs is in the main recognized and adhered to. The most direct and complete control of local affairs by state sani- tary organizations was seen in New Orleans previous to 1898. This city was, so far as its sanitary affairs were C 'crned, governed entirely and directly by the state board of health and its appointees. There was, however, a special reason for this arrangement. The <'it\ oi New ( Cleans iS much the largest City of the state, indeed of the W hole south. It is the gateway of the Mississippi valley, ami an enormous commerce passes through it. Epidemic disease ma\ find and has found entrance here and devastated a score of states. The safety of the whole state being so closely dependent u] the city, the state assumed control ot the city so far as its sanitation was concerned. This would probabl) not have been done in a northern state; it lias not been in Massachu- setts, New York or Pennsylvania, for then great seaports, but in the south where the importance of the state as compared with an) oi its parts is so much greater than it is at the north, the proceeding was an unnatural one. This complete control of local sanitary the state is found not only in isolated instances life NYw < »: i HIS, but is the settled |.olic\ n\rr the larger |>art of at least 0ll( state. In