Stephen Smith

“ The City Inspector’s department, which alone has the machinery for sanitary inspection and surveillance, is a gigantic imposture. Of its forty-four health wardens, whose duty it should be to make house-to-house inspections, searching out the cause The City Inspector’s
Department of disease, and using every known agency for the control and suppression of epidemics, many are liquor dealers, and all are grossly ignorant. Not one has any knowledge of medical subjects, nor dare they freely visit such diseases as smallpox, typhus, or cholera. ”

“ The mother, a wrinkled crone at thirty, sits rocking in her arms an infant whose pasty and pallid features tell that decay and death are usurping the place of health and life. Two older children are in the street, which is their only playground, and the only place where they can go to breathe an atmosphere that is even comparatively pure. ”

“ When it ordered a nuisance to be abated within a given fixed time no mandate should avail to stay its action or the enforcement of its decree.
A board of health, in his opinion, should make its own laws, execute its own laws, and sit in judgment on its own acts. It must be an imperium in imperio. England, the foremost country in the world in the cultivation of sanitary science and in the application of its principles to practice, had by its legislation for a quarter of a century established a precedent which it was right and safe for us to follow. ”

“ Elementary forces which, through ignorance of their true functions in the economy and conservation of nature, were permitted in the past to expend their energy in the destruction of life, have been revealed by science to be man’s most helpful agents in the promotion of comfort, health, and longevity. Electricity was for ages only a thunderbolt, an object of terror, and an agent of destruction, visiting the human residence only to kill its owner and burn the structure. ”

“ But I need not multiply the evidences that 18,000 people, men, women, and children (a goodly-sized town) , are to-day living in our city in a condition the most destructive to health, happiness, and morals that could possibly be devised. As you look into these abodes of wretchedness, filth and disease, the inmates manifest the same lethargic habits as animals, burrowing in the ground. They are, indeed, half narcotized by the constant inhalation of the emanations of their own bodies, and by a prolonged absence of light and fresh air. ”

“ Ask any clergyman, he will tell you with how little satisfaction he makes his visits among the poor, when they are laboring among disease; how he never has the heart to speak of comfort for the soul, when discomforts of the body call so loudly for relief, and for which the scanty aid he can minister seems akin to mockery! ”

“ Their intellects are so blunted and their perceptions so perverted by the noxious atmosphere which they breathe, and the all-pervading filth in which they live, move, and have their being, that they are not susceptible to moral or religious influences. In London, some of the city missionaries have entirely abandoned the tenant-house class. There is, undoubtedly, a depraved physical condition which explains the moral deterioration of these people, and which can never be overcome until we surround them with the conditions of sound health. ”

“ In the retrospect from the vantage ground of half a century of sanitary progress we recognize that during the third quarter of the last century the people of England were waging a successful war on domestic uncleanliness as a contributory, if not the sole cause of epidemic diseases. The health officer of England insisted that domestic filth was the actual cause of many of the low forms of disease, and named them accordingly, “filth diseases.” This official act of the highest health authority of that country led to the practice of cleanliness in the home and its surroundings. ”

“ Far in the wilderness, or deep in the tunnel, or in the mire of the caisson, they toil all unseen164 by their generation, sacrificing health and often life while searching for the true pathway or laying its foundations. When the bridges are builded, the tunnels completed, and the broad highway is thrown open for travel and traffic, few or none of the passing throng give a moment’s thought to the labors and sacrifices of the builders, or the tribute of a sigh to the memory of those who perished at their work. ”

“ Bacteria too rapid increase of the human race on this earth, as our forefathers believed. It is gratifying, and quite satisfying to a revengeful spirit, to learn from the modern laboratory that the special and only function of the bacterium is to perform the duties of a universal scavenger. It is always seeking to decompose animal and vegetable matter. It lives on filth, riots in it, and dies when deprived of it. ”

“ This discovery revealed the fact that filth in every form, whether in the rubbish-heap, the toilet, the garbage, the dust of the floor, or even in the folds of the hands and feet, the secretions of the skin and glands, is a culture bed for germ-producing diseases. The secret of the great power of cleanness as the true remedial measure for the prevention of pestilences is now apparent and every citizen must recognize that the obligation of applying that remedy rests with himself. ”

“ And with this physical degeneration we find mental and moral deterioration. The frequent expression of the poor, “We have no sickness, thank God,” is uttered by those whose sunken eyes, pale cheeks, and colorless lips speak more eloquently than words, of the unseen agencies which are sapping the fountains of health. Vice, crime, drunkenness, lust, disease, and death, here hold sway, in spite of the most powerful moral and religious influences. ”

“ There was a great diminution of such diseases as diphtheria, typhoid, erysipelas, scarlet fever, measles, and other low forms of sickness, so fatal in the homes of the poor, during the period that the citizens exercised so much care in securing cleanliness.
“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” A word fitly spoken broke the spell of centuries, and completely revolutionized human history. ”

“ No human habitation is underground; the ancient rookery, with its five hundred inhabitants, is a past number; the dark, foul courts are disappearing, and in their places have arisen the modern tenements, with their light, airy, and cheerful apartments, and all the conditions necessary to family health and domestic happiness. The laws and ordinances all conspire to compel the landlords to remedy every defect on complaint of the tenant; the penalty being that the latter need not pay rent until the home is made habitable in a sanitary sense. ”

“ Pioneers trackless forest; others remove the obstructions which impede the builders; while a few expert engineers bridge the rivers, tunnel the mountains and lay broad and deep the foundations of the great highway along which humanity passes to a higher civilization. Unfortunately these pioneers are not always known to public fame, and far too often, though benefactors of their race, pass away without a proper recognition of their services. ”

“ In nine cases out of ten, another finger should point toward New York, as the source of the pestilence.
It has been estimated by a competent observer, that every case of smallpox in a country town costs, by derangement of business alone, more money than is annually expended upon its public schools. If we add to this pecuniary loss the feverish excitement and popular apprehension, and the sufferings and probable death of the victim from want of proper care, we may but indifferently estimate the cost to the country of the prevalence of this disease. ”

“ A high death-rate from the diseases which it engenders or intensifies, always implies a large amount of sickness. It is estimated by competent Constant
Sickness authority that there are 28 cases of sickness for every death. On this basis of estimate what an enormous amount of unnecessary sickness exists in our midst! Nor is this a mere supposition. I have an accurate census of many groups of families of that portion of our population who live immured in filth, and here we find the constant sickness-rate excessive. It is no uncommon thing to find it 50, 60, and 70 per cent. ”

“ It is a most interesting fact, therefore, that this most deadly foe of man becomes dangerous only when the latter is harboring in his body waste or decomposing matters that are slowly poisoning him. It is in the process of digesting this material that the bacterium excretes poisons—toxins—of the most virulent nature, which are absorbed into the blood of the human victim, creating the condition popularly known as blood poisoning.
Bacteria perform a most important function in the economy of nature, viz., the conversion of decaying and dead matter into food for plants. ”

“ No event in human history would have more greatly taxed the credulity of the most learned and experienced physician of half a century ago than the prophecy that in the early years of the twentieth century school children would be taught by simple and easily understood object lessons how to prevent and how to cure consumption, the Asiatic cholera, yellow fever, and other epidemics that have devastated cities, destroyed armies, and swept from the earth whole tribes of primitive people. ”

“ Health Organizations past appalling season of sickness and death, and the awful scenes of degradation, misery, and filth developed to them by their researches, have brought into full view the fact that we have no sanitary police worthy of the name; that we are unprotected by that watchful regard over the public health which common sense dictates to be necessary for the security of our lives, the maintenance of the city’s reputation, and the preservation of the interests of the inhabitants.”
This is a perfectly truthful statement of the present condition of New York. ”

“ None but medical men can prosecute such investigations with success, or suggest the proper remedy. If such a corps of sanitary inspectors were daily patrolling their districts, visiting from house to house, searching out sanitary evils, advising and aiding the people in the adoption of preventive measures, no epidemics of smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, or cholera would ever gain more than a transient foothold. The sanitary inspector would truly become an officer of health and would be everywhere welcome. ”

“ I wish now to call your attention to the fact that great as is our mortality and sickness rate, its excess is not equally distributed over the entire population, but falls exclusively upon the poor and helpless. ”

“ They universally complain that they cannot escape from domestic and street filth. It surrounds and pervades their habitations, always accumulating, and never diminishing. The most tidy house-wife, compelled to live in the midst of this ocean of rubbish, with all its degrading associations, soon finds the same level, and from this she can be rescued only by giving her again a clean and well-ordered home. ”

“ The pavement here is uneven, there are deep gutters at either side of the streets, filled with foul slops, in which float or are sunk every form of decaying animal and vegetable matter. Occasionally, at remote and irregular intervals, carts come round, these stagnant pools are dredged, so to speak, and their black and decayed solid contents raked out. If there be anything on earth that is ‘rank and smells to heaven,’ these gutters do on such occasions, especially in the summer months. The streets in this part of the city are the principal depositories of garbage. ”

“ There are a few cellars so dark that one cannot see to read in them, unless by artificial light, except for a few hours in the day, by sitting close to the window; and there are many basement rooms into whose gloomy recesses not a single direct ray from the sun ever shone. The latter are, as a rule, by half their depth below the level of the street. Dark and damp, with very little chance for circulation of air, it would be difficult to imagine a human being more completely beyond reach of sanitary provisions. ”

“ Even though no devastating epidemic is found ravaging the tenant-house, yet the first sight of the wretched inmates convinces you that diseases far more destructive to health and happiness, because creating no alarm, are wasting the vital energies, and slowly but surely consuming the very tissues of the body. ”

“ Alas! human faces look so hideous with hope and self-respect all gone! And female forms and features are made so frightful by sin, squalor, and debasement! To walk the streets as we walked them, in those hours of conflagration and riot, was like witnessing the day of judgment, with every wicked thing revealed, every sin and sorrow blazingly glared upon, every hidden abomination laid bare before hell’s expectant fire? ”

“ Cognizant of these growing evils, and believing that they are susceptible of removal, they have repeatedly and publicly protested against the longer tolerance of such manifest causes of disease and death in our city. Large bodies of influential citizens have been equally impressed with the importance of radical reform in the health organizations of New York, and have strenuously labored, but in vain, to obtain proper legislative enactments.
To give practical effect to their efforts, it was determined in May last to undertake a systematic investigation of the sanitary condition of the city. ”

“ A new era now dawned upon the domestic life of the English people. Every household learned that cleanliness had not only saved a town from a visitation of cholera, but had reduced the contagious and infectious diseases always present in their homes. ”