The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1904-11-17
CRITICISM OF HEALTH BOARDS
State Board Makes Plea For More
Effectual Local Organization.

NAMES Iled LOT more efficient local
organization, and upon this point
draws the following conclusions:
Many of the Incorporated towns
have good charter provisions for
. boards of health, so that there are
now fifty-three local boards of health
in the state. The best of them are
very good, and the poorest are very
poor, some of them so inefficient that
| the money spent upon them is little
/ better than wasted. Now is the time
to mend this fault. If the principle
of local government of counties is not
to develope now, we shall in a few
years find the state covered with nu-
merOus town boards of health acting
under charter provisions, working in
dependently of each other, often at
variance among themselves, without
definite responsibility to any central
authority, and practically incapable
of the co-ordinated activity upon
which the safety of the state depends.
-Four Maryland counties have
each had in one year more smallpox
than the city of Baltimore has had in
five years. Smallpox visits us but oc-
casionally, and the damage inflicted
by this disease is not worth one mo-
ment's consideration beside the harm
done by common infections against
which the county boards make no eff
fort whatever. The county boards
must be strengthened, and their SUI
premacy in their political limits must
be maintained Ike existing method
of organization of county boards of
health it good and should not be dis
turbed.
SIN practice, however, one finds
that county commissioners, who COM
pose boards of health are often quite
ignorant of sanitary operations, and
cannot during their short terms, be-
come informed upon these subjects.
They must appoint a physician as
health officer, and they prefer that
the Office shall be accepted and ad-
ministered. The county commission
ers very rarely meet as boards of
health. Many of them do not desire
or expect any report from their health
officers, and some of them refuse to
sit at all as boards of health. The
men selected as health officers are, as
Il rule, respectable physicians but
they seldom have any practical ia
miiarity with their official duties.
After his appointment the health Off
Ger usually waits for an emergency to
to begin his practical education. He
learns nothing about the restriction
of the common diseases always prey
alent about him, for the county COM
missioners have not authorized him
and perhaps have been forbidden him
to do the simple things which are re
quired by law.
UNLESS the public mind grows eI-
cited about an unusual kind or
amount of sickness, the county health
officer may conclude his official term
without having done his community
a penny's worth of professional SER
vice and without having gained a
penny's worth of knowledge or skill
in sanitation. Such il the status of
sanitary administration in one-third
Of the counties of Maryland, and it is
very expensive. Let us emphasize the
point that this neglect is expensive.
The expense as expressed in the waste
of money on the maintenance of such
boards is very slight. When these
idle boards are confronted with what
they consider to be emergencies, it
simply means that they have been
caught asleep. Moreover, when they
do proceed they incur much unDeces-
sary expense and all the injurious
Accomplishments of haste and alarm
Even in the presence of familiar dis
ease, such as measles, scarlet fever,
diphtheria, whooping cough, typhoid
fever, local health officers sometimes
grow suddenly very active under
stimulus of popular excitement and
do very eXtravagant and unnecessary
things.
sit would be hard to estimate the
annual loss to the state from closing
public schools on account Of 90
tious diseases, but the loss is certainty
greater than the amount of money
paid in salaries to all the health Off
GERS in the state. 1t is an irrational
and unnecessary practice and woul d
disappear if health officers were in
structed in the more definite and less
expensive methods of controlling
transmissable diseases. This is but
an illustration of common sort of
hygiene error.
"Unwise and costly restrictions of
personal liberty, disturbances of pri-
vate business sometimes of the peace
and comfort of whole communities.
add to the cost OF inexpert sanitary
/ government. The law never intended
that preventive measures should cost