The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1876-06-10
Sanitary Legislation for Maryland.
BY CHARLES NJ. ELLIS, NJ. D., MEMBER OF
THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH.

BY CHARLES NJ. ELLIS, NJ. D., MEMBER OF
THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH.
State Medicine is the legitimate offspring
of developing science and popular govern
ment. In the middle ages, whilst Europe
lay under an impenetrable cloud of ignor-
ance and the heels of despotic government,
mans habitation was the cradle of pesti-
lence and the nursery of epidemics. From
the frightful ravages of the plague, the
sweating sickness, the Jail fever or typhus,
the fiuxes, smallpox and scurvy, he knew
no escape, and saw only in them the finger
of an avenging Deity, whom he vainly
sought to appease. The governing class,
bent only on conquest and extortion, and
enduring in the ignorance it could not
enlighten, and in the bigotry it nourished,
were equal sufferers with the governed.
Learning was prostituted to the perpetual
ton of this sad condition. With the de
cline of Feudalism came the liberation of
Mind. Science developed with the growth
of personal liberty and popular govern
ment. In this unfolding, the value of
human life grew pari passu The pursuits
of war giving way to the occupations OF
peace, solicited and preserved the family.
Human joys expanded as human ills were
curtaled.
Chief of these ills were the ravages of
pestilences, which, one by one, dropped out
of the category of human scourges, or
grew momently less as man abandoned his
filth, or as their causes became known and
information was dif'used, under more be-
neficent governments. The plague has not
been in England for two hundred years,
nor on the continent of Europe for more
than hundred; the sweating sickness,
product of English filth and English glut
tony, appeared for the last time in 1551 :.
Since John Howard exposed the abuses of
prisons, the dependence of typhus upon
overcrowding having received universal
it's power to destroy is day by
day waning. From the day in 1776 that
Captain Cook presented to the Royal So
ciety an account of his memorable circum-
navigation of the world, and the means by
which he had escaped the scurvy, the mari
time activities of this century became pos
sibilities. But the GROWING glory of the
eighteenth century was the discovery of
vaccination by Jenner, which but requires
its compulsory performance, under legisla-
tive enactment, to exterminate that great
est scourge of the human race-small pox.
In the first half of this century, SAM
tarans were rather engaged in the applica-
ton of means already acquired to the pre-
vention of disease, than to further prose-
cution of inquiries and the enlargement of
their knowledge. But the escape of cholera
from it's Eastern confines, and its spread
over Europe in 1871 and 1S4S, startled the
Western nations, and aroused them to new
endeavors. The Parliamentary Report on
the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring
Population of Great Britain, published in
1912, Prof. Gardner declares was the true
starting point of modern sanitary legisla-
ton. Edwin Chadwick's Reports upon the
Health of Towns in 1914 and 1916 proved
an immense stimulus to the growth of pop
ular interest in sanitary matters. In re-
Spouse to the growing demand, Parliament
passed the Public Health Act of 1S4S, and
State medicine became fairly inaugurated
in England. Every succeeding Parliament
confirmed its existence, widened its appli-
cation, and amplified its powers. In 1853,
a Public Health Department was estab-
lished in the Privy Council, and the first of
John Simon, made Medical
Officer to the Council.
From that date preventive medicine
made giant strides throughout the British
Empire. England is now divided into fif
teen hundred sanitary districts, each hav-
ing local health authority and medical
officer, and subject to the central control
and supervision of the local government
board, whose presiding officer is a member
of the Cabinet. At the recent session of
Parliament, the Public Health Act of 1915,
being consolidation of previous Acts,
was passed to simplify the duties of the
army of medical officers who keep watch
over the sanitary condition of England.
In America State medicine is of very
recent origin. In September, 1869, the
first State Board of Health was organized,
under an Act of the Legislature of Massa-
chusetts. So skillfully have the gentle
men constituting this Board executed the
trust committed to them, that their sue
cess in winning the confidence and good
will of tho people has justified its distin-
guished President in recently declaring his
belief that no department of the State
government is so popular. The example
of Massachusetts, has found many follow
ers, and the list of State Boards of Health
is continually being augmented. To the
intelligence of the General Assembly of
1874 the people of Maryland are indebted
for the recognition of the principle of State
medicine in the organization of the pres
ent State Board of Health.
The duties imposed upon our Board by
the Act establishing it, are chiefly confined
to inquiries in regard to the prevalence and
causation of disease, and advice to the
authorities in matters pertaining to the
public health when solicited. No execu
tive authority is given. In its provisions
this Act does not differ materially from
those establishing Boards of Health in
other States; their duties, also being advi-
sorry, though executive powers, as in Mas
sachusetts, have from time to time been
conferred. And it is more than doubtful
whether, at this day, larger powers should
be exercised by State Board, except in
those cases where the characteristics of our
popular government and the habits of our
people interfere to prevent the removal of
gross abuses, and wide spread nuisances,
by the local authority.
The diffusion of sanitary knowledge
amongst the people; the stimulation of
popular interest in preventive medicine;
conducting critical inquiries into the causa-