whole place including children and mother filthy; closet under stairs. used for storage of food, clothes, old shoes, general rubbish and a family of kittens. Yard: water and slops thrown about; manure and paper in open pen, flies abundant; barrels of salted fat in yard ready for shipment to Kingston. Well: beside window where woman throws out slop water. Privy: no covers, very dirty; shallow vault extending foot and half beyond privy house, inadequately covered, many flies. Case No. 8. Ice Cream and Delicatessen Shop-A- S—, Proprietor. Two-story building; first floor contains shop and kitchen, partition between three-fourths height of room. Shop screened, kitchen unscreened, flies enter by rear. Shop and kitchen fairly clean, municipal water supply; ice box filthy; ice cream in rusty cans; baked goods and meat exposed in shop to fly infection. Dishes washed by rinsing in a vat of dirty soapy water then in a vat of cold water. Kitchen drain stopped up, now slops run into yard. All other house drains empty into cellar which contains by actual measurement 22 inches of water. Rooms on second floor very dirty. In one room live chickens are housed, also extra dishes for the shop in open cupboard, dishes covered with dirt; floor covered with quantity of sour bread and other scraps. Privy needs cleaning, covered with flies; garbage in open barrel, thrown in woods, neither burned nor buried; slops and refuse thrown about the yard. Some of these places are not 500 feet from railway stations accommodating much summer travel. Nothing but a paid health official with power to enforce a law prohibiting such health menaces to the traveling public, will induce these people to cease to live as they do. Until such laws and regulations are established, typhoid fever, infantile paralysis, diphtheria and tuberculosis will continue to spring up in rural districts among people who have carefully preserved their distance from all persons who they think may be carriers of infection, and who are entirely unaware of this condition in their neighborhood. REPORTS OF DIVISIONS Division of Sanitary Engineering - August, 1916 Examination and approval of plans for sewerage and sewage disposal: Ogdensburg; Binghamton; Eastchester; Salamanca; Sonyea (institution); Tuckahoe; Great Neck (estate); Niskayuna and Colonie (school); Greenport (school); Chenango County Tuberculosis Hospital; Lisbon (creamery); Java (creamery); Cortlandville (creamery); Munnsville (creamery); Slate Hill (creamery). Investigation and reports of complaints regarding sewage disposal, stream pollution and public nuisances: Town of Harrison; Fulton County Tuberculosis Hospital; Hudson; Huletts' Landing; Hague; Albion; Rossburg; Eagle Mills; Cattaraugus; Medina; Cornwall-on-Hudson (school); Pearl River; Shelter Island; Altamont. Investigation and reports of public water supplies: Madrid; Comstock; Hobart; North Tarrytown; Dobbs Ferry; Ardsley; Hastings-on-Hudson; Scarsdale; Hornell; Mt. Vernon; Larchmont; Cooperstown; Lockport; Phelps; Penn Yan; Clyde; Tarrytown; Irvington; Dunkirk; Williamsville; Watervliet. Division of Laboratories and Research - August, 1916 During the summer months, even before the fiscal year began July 1, the demands upon the Laboratory suddenly became so excessive that the resources of the Laboratory as provided in last winter's appropriation were completely overwhelmed. This was due to the epidemics of infantile paralysis spreading from the City of New York throughout the State, and of dysentery at Poughkeepsie and para-typhoid fever among the troops returning from Texas. Lack of appropriations for contingencies has greatly hampered the prompt establishment of laboratory service to cope with these emergencies. The curtailment in sanitary supervisors has necessitated the assignment of some of the more experienced members of the laboratory staff in the field. The development of local municipal laboratories, notably at Poughkeepsie and at Tuxedo, has greatly facilitated the work, whereas the absence of such laboratories in other districts has been a great handicap. The facilities of the local laboratory at Poughkeepsie have enabled the staff of the central laboratory at Albany assigned there to undertake without delay the examination of the cases of dysentery in the city and neighboring districts, and also of the troops at Camp Whitman. In the Poughkeepsie laboratory since September 5 a total of 1570 blood examinations, and 479 examinations of intestinal discharges, have been made to date September 23, and of these 1070 agglutination (Widal) tests) 216 specimens of feces made in the last week. Distribution of diagnostic outfits, diphtheria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, syphilis, and other diseases, and culture tubes have been 443 1917 3587 1611 Public Health Is Purchasable. Twenty-five Thousand Lives Can Be Saved In New York State Within The Next Five Years HERMANN M. BIGGS, M.D. MILK AND COMMUNICABLE DISEASE EARLY DIAGNOSIS OF COMMUNICABLE DISEASE QUARANTINE CONTROL OF CONTACTS Monthly Bulletin New York State Department of Health MATTHIAS NICOLL, Jr., M. D., Editor TABLE OF CONTENTS Milk and Communicable Disease, Linsly R. Williams, M.D.. The Early Diagnosis of Communicable Disease, Matthias Nicoll, Jr., M.D The Quarantine Control of Contacts, Paul B. Brooks, M.D..... Public Health Nursing and Its Influence on Public Health, C. Josephine Durkee. PAGE NOVEMBER, 1916 VISION Where there is no vision the people perish". It is doubtful if even the wisdom of Solomon could have enabled him to foresee the wide. applicability to modern life of this oft-quoted proverb. Vision without definite aim holds an important place in the realm of literature, art and religion. Vision born of the hope of the moral and physical betterment of the people is the rock foundation of all human progress. Official representatives and administrators in the various. fields of public activity are on the whole neither better nor worse than those for whose welfare they assume responsibility. Unprogressive officials, whether their field of jurisdiction be great or small, truly reflect the general character of the community, content to live from day to day accepting things as they are, nor caring to think of them as they should be, looking with indifference on the inroads made by disease, preventable deaths and vicious habits, seemingly out of step with civilization; and yet the sole reason for the difference between such a community and that which is called progressive is that the latter has at some time come under the influence of a practical dreamer, not content to accept all human ills as inevitable, willing to bear the burden of ridicule and abuse, to fight obstructions and accept the chances of personal failure, in the certain knowledge that a successor will be found to carry on the work, and that while human progress may falter and from time to time seem to pause, it never ceases, and the lesson taught by a vision realized can not be wholly lost. |