STATE OF NEW YORK. 
No. 59. 
IN ASSEMBLY, 
February 7, 1861. 
REPORT 
Of the committee on the Incorporation of Cities and Villages, 
on the bill entitled "An act concerning the public health 
of the counties of New York, Kings and Richmond, and 
the waters thereof." 
Mr. Ball, from the Committee on the Incorporation of Cities and 
Villages, to which was referred the bill entitled "An act concern- 
ing the public health of the counties of New York, Kings and 
Richmond, and the waters thereof," presents the following 
REPORT: 
No higher duty devolves upon the public authorities of the 
State, than to provide for the health of its citizens. Productive 
labor, education, morals, and the best results of Christian civiliza- 
tion, are dependent upon good health and sound physical develop- 
ment. 
No country on earth possesses more of the elements upon which 
vigorous life and healthful longevity depend, than does the State 
of New York. Lifted from its ocean bed in the morning of crea- 
tion, its lands have become consolidated, its waters cleansed, its 
atmosphere purified. Its broad and magnificent undulations, and 
its lofty water sheds, constitute a natural system of drainage 
which secures the removal of excessive moisture, and the impuri- 
ties which engender disease and destroy life. Lying within the 
temperate zone, it possesses a climate most conducive to mental 
activity and physical endurance. 
Assembly, No. 59. 
1 2 
Assembly 
The Metropolitan District 
Embracing the counties of New York, Kings and Richmond, 
while it possesses in an eminent degree the characteristics 
which mark the State, has additional advantages in being 
situated upon a noble bay, whose waters are hourly renewed 
by the rivers that lave its shores, and by the restless tides 
of the ocean. Art has added to these sources of health and 
comfort. For drinking, washing, bathing, and for culinary pur- 
poses, an entire river has been diverted from its channel among 
the hills of Westchester, and distributed, by a hundred thousand 
pipes and conduits, through the streets and tenements, the shops 
and warehouses of the metropolis. A park, imperial in its pro- 
portions, and princely in its decorations and embellishment, invites 
the invalid and the student, the man of business, the tired labo- 
rer and the ennuied citizen, to its cool retreats and its sylvan 
sports. 
In this district, where nature and art have combined their at- 
tractive and beneficent powers, civilization should exhibit its 
highest attainments, humanity its noblest specimens, and life its 
longest period of healthful longevity. 
But these reasonable expectations are far from being realized. 
An examination of the hospitals, jails, houses of refuge and correc- 
tion, and the habitations of the poorer classes, reveals a fearful 
amount of sickness and disease ; while the annual bills of mortality 
show an alarming loss of human life. 
Vice, stimulated by conditions favorable to its growth, is forced 
into precocious development, and speedily assumes the formidable 
proportion, and revolting aspects of crime ; while the efforts of 
statesmen and legislators are invoked, not to develop art, push on 
discovery, and enlarge the boundaries of human dominion, but to 
alleviate human suffering, to remove the causes of sickness and 
disease which ignorance and cupidity have produced, and restore 
the race to its normal condition of health and vigor. 
The causes for this unsatisfactory condition of the public health 
are obvious. Sanitary laws have been violated-the means which 
nature has provided for purification and renovation have been 
neglected, and their beneficent action obstructed and impaired. 
Defective drainage, filthy streets, yards and tenements, ill con- 
structed dwellings, contracted rooms, crowded sleeping apartments, 
imperfect ventilation, exclusion of sun light, under-ground tene- 
ments, living, and performing all the labors of a household in a No. 59.] 
3 
single apartment; deficency of the decent accessaries required by 
the usages of social life, the use of unwholsome food, impure milk, 
poisonous drinks, and adulterated medicines; the use of impure 
gasses and explosive fluids for producing light; the employment of 
ignorant doctors and careless druggists, want of hospital accommo- 
dations, and neglect of the sanitary provisions by which infected 
districts may be isolated, and contagious diseases placed under the 
control of the proper authorities; these furnish abundant causes for 
the low condition of the public health of New York, and its increased 
mortality over cities less favored by nature, and less able to apply 
the discoveries of science, and the inventions of art to establish 
health, and prolong life. And when to these causes are added the 
further fact, that the Health Department is placed in the hands of 
politicians to reward party services, and purchase party support, 
when its officers are destitute of medical knowledge, without en- 
gineering or architectural skill, and wanting in executive ability, 
the wonder is not that so many sicken and die, but that any escape. 
One of the objects contemplated by the bill herein recommended, 
after providing for an efficient Board of Health, and defining its 
duties, is to remove the Department from the arena of local poli- 
tics, and place it beyond the reach of partizan influence. Public 
health is too intimately connected with public morals and material 
progress, to be left to the mercy of political demagogues, and 
jeoparded by the uncertain results of a popular election. 
Besides, the demands of party, and compliance with the behests 
of power, are incompatible with a faithful discharge of the impor- 
tant duties which devolve upon the special guardians of the pub- 
lic health. 
The necessity for placing the supervision of the public health 
in a single department, with sufficient powers for the efficient per- 
formance of its duties, would seem to be apparent. By the sepa- 
rate action of distinct and independent boards, or by the non-con- 
currence of some official persons or body, or by the interference 
of one department with the duties of another, the great object of 
improving the sanitary condition of the city and district, may be 
defeated. How often has sickness been produced, disease engen- 
dered, and the fear of pestilence increased, by a want of harmony 
in the departments on the subject of street cleaning? How many 
important duties have been neglected, while courts and juries 
were determining in what manner and by whom these duties 
should be performed? How many avenues for the entrance of 4 
Assembly 
disease have been left unguarded, while rival claimants were 
litigating their right to defend the passage ? 
" The sanitary interests of the city are grievously suffering 
through most culpable neglect; the authority for the correction 
of the evils is lodged with the Common Council; but that honorable 
body not only does nothing itself for their removal, but prevents 
anything from being done by persistently withholding the neces- 
sary power from the department to which it naturally and legiti- 
mately belongs. 
" Meanwhile the march of disease and death silently and steadi- 
ly presses on, filling the city with widowhood and orphanage, 
pauperism and crime/' [Report of the New York Association for 
Improving the Condition of the Poor, 1860. ] 
Besides, where duties are divided, responsibility is lessened, and 
no one feels compelled to act, however great the necessity. 
It can hardly be doubted that the great loss of life consequent 
upon a want of proper official supervision of the public health, 
is mainly owing to a defective and erroneous construction and ad- 
ministration of the health department. 
"There are three separate and distinct departments, appointed 
to exercise a care over the public health in the city of New York, 
each independent of the other. They are- 
"First-the Board of Health, composed of the Mayor, Aider- 
men and Councilmen, ex-officio. 
" Second-the Commissioners of Health, consisting of six indi- 
viduals. 
Third-the City Inspector's department, comprising the city 
inspector, twenty-two health wardens, the same number of assist- 
ant health wardens, a bureau of sanitary inspection, a bureau of 
records and statistics, a bureau of markets, and a bureau for the 
inspection of weights and measures. 
" It can be shown from the official statements of every one of 
these departments, which are ostensibly devoted to the care of 
the public health, that neither of them takes any concern in the 
ordinary sanitary condition of the city; that the deaths may in- 
crease to any extent, however frightful, by any other disease than 
a so-called epidemic, yet among the one hundred and twelve offi- 
cials, there is not one capable and authorized to pay the least 
regard to it." | Report of a Special Committee of the New York 
Sanitary Association, 1859.] 
11 All who have observed the unspeakably filthy and wretched 
condition of our streets, will need no argument to convince them 
that any change from the present system-or rather want of sys- 
tem-can scarcely fail to be an improvement. The City Inspect- 
or's Department has for years been perverted from its legitimate 
functions, and made a mere sinecure-hospital for the wounded and 
needy followers of whatever political combination wielded its No. 59.j 
5 
power,-this main object being only departed from nowand again, 
when it was thought safe or practicable to put through some gi- 
gantic scheme for plundering the corporation by giving out con- 
tracts for street cleaning or removing offal to men who invariably 
neglected to do the work, though never omitting to draw the full 
amount, and sometimes much more than the full amount, of their 
stipulated compensation." [New York Daily Times, Feb. 1, 1861. 
Editorial.] 
The State and the nation are directly interested in the condition 
of the public health of New York. New-York is the social and 
business centre of the United States. The rapid and easy means 
employed for travel and transportation, tend to the centralization 
of business in the cities of the seaboard. In fact, under the 
joint reign of science and the arts, the whole country is becoming 
one mighty suburb of the great metropolis. Here, men of all 
classes, occupations, designs and expectations, and from all parts 
of the country, are brought into communication and contact. 
Here the diseases and infirmities of every locality, are represented 
and propagated, and redistributed with new virus throughout the 
land. The waves of emigration that break upon the city wharves, 
spread in rapidly extending circles over the country, and carry to 
village and hamlet and farm, whatever infection and disease 
with which they are freighted. 
These facts constitute an unanswerable appeal to every man, 
without regard to his locality or to the sanitary condition of his 
own district, to use his efforts to place this subject of the public 
health of New York in competent hands, and provide, by proper 
legislative enactments, for the observance of those sanitary and 
hygienic laws upon which life and health depend. 
An amendment of the charter of the city of New York has been 
recommended by the Governor in his annual message, and is ear- 
nestly asked for on different grounds, by nearly all classes of the 
community. It may be supposed by some, that the bill reported 
by the committee, will in some way conflict with such a measure ; 
but this is not the case. The Board of Health as now constituted, 
possesses despotic power in regard to the public health; and, in 
competent hands, this is as it should be. Great emergencies re- 
quire the exercise of unlimited power, and certainly no emergency 
can arise in which the exercise of such a power is more needed 
than the presence of epidemic or contagious diseases in populous 
communities. 
The preservation of public health should be paramount to all 
charters. 6 
Assembly 
The remark is sometimes made by the friends of sanitary reform, 
that a proper health bill should be embodied in an amended charter. 
The necessity of a Metropolitan commission renders this clearly 
impossible. Counties, cities, and towns may be divided by arbi- 
trary local boundaries ; disease, infection, pestilence, are stayed 
by no such limits. They obey laws of their own, and spread where- 
ever the predisposing cause exists, setting man's authority at defi- 
ance. The mortality of Brooklyn stands only next above that of 
New York. 
" Already it is beginning to feel the unhealthful influence of its 
proximity to New York. Though less confined in area, and far 
less densly inhabited, yet the baleful tenement house system already 
shelters no less than 76,000 of its inhabitants. Like New York it 
has no sanitary supervision, except what is provided in a single 
officer, denominated " health officer" (and he is not necessarily by 
law a medical man,) who has not one professional assistant; all 
the sanitary inspection and execution for which a keen medical 
acumen is alone competent, being performed by members of the 
ordinary police force. Without the early introduction of a sani- 
tary system, equivalent to that proposed in the accompanying bill, 
the evils alluded to must inevitably increase ; with its aid, Brook- 
lyn may be raised to a standard of salubrity unsurpassed." 
[Assembly Document, No. 129, I860.] 
The report of Doctor Jones, health officer of the city of Brooklyn, 
for the current year, shows conclusively that the predictions of 
the committee in 1860 are being verified, and that like New York, 
the health of Brooklyn is on a rapidly descending grade. Staten 
Island, from its situation, and intimate business and social relations 
with New York, is almost equally interested in the health of the 
city, with that of its own. 
In round numbers 10,000 residents of Richmond county daily 
visit the city, for the purpose of business or pleasure, and return 
at night. These, daily, run the risk of contracting infection or dis- 
ease, and transferring it to their families and townsmen; while 
New York should also be protected from the risk of infection from 
these thousands daily mixing among every class of its citizens. 
One great cause of the insufficiency of Quarantine, has been the 
impossibility of regulating this daily transit to and from Staten 
Island, owing to the absence of any uniform system of cooperation 
between the authorities of the two counties. If yellow fever im- 
ported in any inspected vessel should break out on Staten Island, 
New York would again be, as it has been heretofore, at the mercy 
of Richmond county. No. 59. 
7 
The deaths from yellow fever at Gravesend, Fort Hamilton and 
Bay Ridge in 1856, are traceable almost directly to the non-enforce- 
ment of proper sanitary measures by a power able to harmonize 
and adjust the conflicting interests of the two counties. The 
Metropolitan character of the bill herewith reported, protects it 
also from the charge of unnecessary interference with the rights 
of the city of New York. It is not a merely local measure. For 
the regulation and consolidation of the counties the Legislature 
must intervene. This cannot be effected by the counties themselves. 
If it is necessary that men should be familiar with the duties 
they are required to perform, and be able to act with that 
confidence which arises from a thorough knowledge of the prin- 
ciples involved, then it is evident that Boards of Health should be 
mainly composed of learned men from the medical and engineering 
professions. This opinion is fortified by the testimony of some of 
the most eminent medical men of the age. 
" My idea is, that thb whole sanitary body should be composed 
of thoroughly qualified medical men." [Dr. J. H. Griscom.] 
" It appears to me, that none but those persons who are'quali- 
fied by the study of medical science, and hygienic science in partic- 
ular, should be appointed to sanitary offices, for none others can 
do the work properly." [Dr. Joseph M. Smith ] 
" In my view, the Board of Health should consist of a medi- 
cal man, and a geologist, who should be a man capable of appre- 
ciating the features of a country, and of a chemist, who can analyze 
the sources of disease." [Dr. Alexander H. Stephens.] 
111 think that everything appertaining to the public health, 
should be under the care of medical men." [Dr. Richard S. Kissam.] 
" If the Health Warden be a grocer, or a carman, disease frightens 
him, and he runs away." [Dr. Griscom.] 
" Everything relating to the health of the city ought to be strictly 
under medical supervision. The present Board of Health is not a 
medical board ; it is a hydra-headed monster." [Dr. Wm. Rockwell, j 
It is found that all those who from local consideration, have 
taken much interest and direction in sanitary measures, had either 
to become medical men themselves, or to resort to the assistance 
of medical men; and therefore there is no reason why those who 
have been trained to observe the causes of disease, should not 
direct their department, as much as the architect, the agriculturist, 
the soldier, or any other professional men, in their individual call- 
ing or occupation." [Dr. D. B. Reid, Fellow of the Royal Society 
of Edinburg.] 
" I do contend that a medical education, and a medical edu- 
cation only, will fit him (the city inspector) to know those things 
that are necessary for a proper sanitary regulation of the city." 
[Dr. Samuel Rotton.J 8 
[Assembly 
" It appears to me, that a man who has devoted his energies 
and his life to the investigation of the causes of disease, would be 
better calculated to apply remedies in removing disease. It 
appears to be common sense to think that." [Dr. Isaac Wood.] 
" It appears to me, to be a perfect absurdity, to appoint a shoe- 
maker, a cooper, or a livery stable keeper, as health warden ; it 
is an outrage upon common sense, and common honesty to do it." 
[Dr. Simon Bacheldor.] 
ATMOSPHERIC AIR. 
This great supporter of life is supplied in unlimited quantities 
by the beneficent Creator; and agencies are by him employed to 
preserve its purity, and present it, under all the operations of 
natural causes, amid all the mutations of heat and cold, of sun 
and storm, in all latitudes and at all habitable heights, exactly in 
the condition required by the necessities of animal life. 
Under this benign arrangement, man receives, at each succes- 
sive inhalation, fresh draughts of nature's cordial, that sends the 
blood along its crimson channels in swifter currents and returns 
it in fuller volumes to renovate and exalt the powers of life. 
The denizens of field and forest respond in merry gambols, or 
in calm repose, to the influence of this invigorating fluid; while 
the lark, under its healthful stimulus, soars farther heavenward, 
and utters in sweeter strains, its rapturous song of praise. 
"Atmospheric air is, to the animal system, a powerful stimulant, 
as well as nutrient, substance. In sufficient purity and copious- 
ness, it imparts a sustaining and vivifying power unequalled 
by any other substance. Its vitalizing operations present one 
instance of the wonderful adaptations of natural things to each 
other, but it is singularly striking because of the immediate and 
incessant dependence of animals upon it for life and strength. 
" Air, when pure, gives a freshness and vigor, a tone to the 
nervous and muscular parts of the system, productive of the 
highest degree of mental and physical enjoyment." [Senate Doc. 
No. 49, 1859. Testimony of Dr. Griscom.J 
"The average number of pulsations of the heart is seventy-two 
per minute. There is, on the average, one respiration to about 
four pulsations of the heart, making the average number of respi- 
rations eighteen per minute. 
" There are consequently in one hour, 4,320 pulsations ; and in 
the twenty-four hours, the number is 103,680. 
" The number of respirations in one hour is 1,080 ; and in twen- 
ty-four hours, 25,920. 
"The amount of blood sent to the lungs at each pulsation of 
the heart, is calculated to be about two ounces; this multiplied 
by seventy-two (the number of pulsations per minutegives one 
hundred and forty-four ounces, or about nine pints of blood sent No. 59.] 
9 
to the lungs every minute, or sixty-seven and a half gallons per 
hour. 
" At each inspiration, forty cubic inches, or about one pint of 
air is inhaled; making eighteen pints of air inhaled every minute, 
or 1,080 pints per hour. 
" These sums multiplied by twenty-four, respectively, give the 
following results: 
" Every twenty-four hours there flows to the lungs, sixty hogs- 
heads of air, and thirty hogsheads of blood. 
" These amounts, apparently so enormous, are the results of accu- 
rate and oft repeated experiments and calculations, and serve well 
to show the importance, direct and relative, of the influences of 
the blood and atmosphere upon each other, and upon the condition 
of the body. 
" Now, when we consider that it is upon the blood that the body 
depends for its existence from moment to moment; that to per- 
form its office, the blood must be continually renewed, from a 
state of impurity (which, if allowed to continue unremoved, would 
soon prove fatal,) to a condition of purity, when it possesses the 
highest amount of activity; that this change is principally de- 
pendent upon the atmosphere taken in at the lungs ; the enormous 
quantities of blood and air which daily pass through the lungs, 
and that the purer the air inhaled, the better will the blood be 
fitted to sustain the health and energy of the body ; we have some 
of the data upon which to base our estimates of the value of fresh 
and pure air to our health, happiness and longevity." [Uses and 
Abuses of Air. John II. Griscom, M. D. | 
It is only when man in the exercise of his power, obstructs the 
operation of the wise provisions of nature, that air, the great 
supporter of life, is converted into an agent of destruction, and 
becomes the avenger of God's violated law. 
It is because man has disturbed the harmony of nature, and 
neglected the laws of health, that infection hangs upon the skirts 
of commerce, and pestilence follows in the footsteps of trade ; that 
disease and deformity stalk through the streets, and enter into the 
dwelling, sit in the school room, and look out from the grates and 
windows of all the charitable and reformatory institutions of the 
city. 
" There is no tampering with the respiratory wants; the lungs 
must have their due supply of pure air, or the entire animal organ- 
ism suffers-the lungs suffer, the heart suffers, the brain suffers, 
and the mind works slowly ; the stomach is weakened in its func- 
tions ; muscular movement is enfeebled, the senses are dull, the 
natural color of health, is replaced by palor. 
The movements of inspiration and expiration, which make up 
VENTILATION. 10 
Assembly 
respiration, constitute the natural ventilation of the living frame. 
This living ventilation is carried on from birth to death, by the 
infant, as well as the adult, by the profoundest philosopher, as 
well as the solitary artisan in his close polluted atmosphere, or by 
the sailor, amid storms in a pure and invigorating air. 
Whether the circumambient air be pure or pestilential, we 
drink of it twenty times a minute; if of the former kind, we look 
old in our youth ; if of the latter, we maintain the appearance of 
youth in old age. The average chance of living to the proverbial 
age of three score years and ten, may be considered the measure 
of the purity of the air we breathe." [Dr. Hutchinson-Journal 
of public health, Vol. l.| 
What provisions have been made for the needful supply of this 
auxiliary to life, in human habitations; or to what degree has the 
State and city governments permitted its flow to be diminished, 
and its purity impaired ? 
" First. More than one-half the entire population of New York, 
reside in crowded tenement houses, and there is no statute or mu- 
nicipal law regulating the construction, ventilation, or the space 
allowed to specified numbers of residents t herein. Hence, crowding 
such structures to their utmost capacity, has become the rule 
rather than the exception ; and it may here be stated, that our 
city has an underground population of more than twenty-five 
thousand persons. 
In the 17th ward alone, there are 1,257 tenement houses, having 
20,917 rooms, which are occupied by 10,123 families, embracing 
a total number of 51,172 persons ; thusgivingan average of about 
four persons to each suite of two apartments, one only of which is 
usually occupied as a dormitory, and that one often a dark, close 
room, of a capacity only from 500 to 800 cubic feet. 
Now, in a close apartment of only 600 cubic feet, a single per- 
son cannot spend six consecutive hours, in an air of ordinary tem- 
perature, without impairment to health. The air in such an 
apartment would become too much vitiated for healthy respiration 
at. the expiration of sixty minutes. 
In some of the lower wards of the city, the tenement houses are 
much more densely crowded than in those just mentioned. In one 
of them, containing from 120 to 150 families of from three to ten 
persons each, there are but about forty feet of frontage and sun 
light. In two of the smallest of those apartments, eight cases of 
malignant typhus have been seen at one time ; and at the last visi- 
tation of cholera, the first cases of that malady occured in that 
pent up, and over-crowded locality." [Elisha Harris, M. D. intro- 
ductory outline of the programme of improvement in ventilation.] 
" It is a settled law, that the number of persons on a given area 
of soil cannot be increased beyond a certain limit, without endan- 
gering health. If, for illustration, a one-story building, 25 by 40 
feet may safely accommodate ten persons, another ten cannot No. 59.J 
11 
occupy a second story over the same ground with impunity, nor 
•without risk to the health of those in the first story ; and as the 
air vitiated by respiration ascends, if a third, a fourth or fifth story 
is added and occupied, as is common, especially in new tenant 
houses, the danger to all is increasd in a fearful ratio. In proof 
of this, a distinguished physician states, that of fifteen men who 
were employed on a second floor, only four made any complaint 
of illness ; of seventeen employed in precisely the same way, on 
the third and uppermost floor, three had spitting of blood, two 
had affections of the lungs, and five constant and severe colds. In 
other words, ten of these seventeen suffered from diseases affecting: 
the chest, while only one in the room beneath had a disease of this 
nature. In another room similarly constructed, the health of but 
four out of twenty in the lower room were injuriously affected, 
while ten out of twenty in the upper room were diseased.' "It is 
not, therefore, the number of cubic feet of air which determines 
the healthfulness of a residence for a given number of persons ; the 
superficial feet of earth they may cover is an important item of 
consideration." 
" The following table exceedingly well illustrates the indispen- 
sableness of a due supply of pure air: 
104 
105 
101 
Persons. 
Who had less than 500 
Who had from 500 to 600 
Who had more than 600 
Cubic feet of air. 
4* & CO 
Spitting 
of blood. 
Per cent. 
to w 
Catarrh. 
| QO CO QO 
Other 
diseases. 
44 
32 
24 
Total. 
12.50 
4.25 
3.96 
Spitting 
of blood. 
1.25 
3.68 
1.98 
Catarrh. 
17.31 
20.00 
' 17.82 
Other 
diseases. 
42.31 
27.82 
23.76 
Total. 
" In the larger towns and cities of England, the authorities have 
been forced to limit the number of occupants to the size of each 
house or apartment; and the following resolutions on the subject 
of ventilation, have been submitted by a committee of the gov- 
ernment for parliamentary action: 
" 1. That no living, sleeping, or work room shall contain less 
than 144 superficial feet, or shall be less than eight feet high. 
" 2. That such room shall have at least one window opening at 
the top. 
" 3. Also an open fire-place. 
" 4. That in every living, sleeping or work room erected in fu- 
ture, some method shall be adopted of allowing the foul air to 
escape from the upper part of the room. 
"5. That every such room in future, shall have some means of 
continually admitting fresh air. 
" 6. In every public building in which gas is used, to insist 
upon the use of plans to carry off the products of combustion, 
and not to allow them to escape in a room. 
" 7. That all churches, schools, theatres, work-shops, work- 12 
[Assembly 
houses, manufactories and other public buildings, shall adopt such 
methods of ventilation as shall be approved by the medical health 
officer." (Report of a Committee on the Sanitary Condition of 
the Laboring Classes.] 
"In the siith ward, where there were 25,000 inhabitants in 
1856, having 1,400 dwellings, there were 1,089 deaths. 
"In the fifteenth ward the population was 24,046, having 2,245 
dwelings, and the deaths were 436. 
" These proportions have perfectly astonished myself, even, in 
looking into them. The proportions of deaths in the fifteenth 
ward, are one in fifty-five; and in the sixth ward, one in twenty- 
three." [Testimony of Dr. R. S. Kissam.j 
" The effect of crowding is shown by a table exhibiting the 
mortality, and the number of square yards to each person, in three 
groups of metropolitan districts. 
Table. 
Sq. yds. 
Annual 
Mortality 
to each 
mortality. 
f m typhus 
person. 
alone. 
1st group of ten districts 
35 
3,428 
349 
2d do do 
li 9 
2,786 
181 
3d do do 
180 
2,289 
131 
" These facts appear to flow legitimately from the very fact that 
space is considered. If it is asked how can space have an influ- 
ence in promoting health? I would reply, it does so in two or 
three ways. First, by shutting out the light ; secondly, by lessen- 
ing the amount of pure fresh air; and thirdly, by the accumula- 
tion of offensive exhalations from the human body, long confined 
in the same appartment. These three causes will generate typhus 
pestilence anywhere, whether in a house, or on shipboard, in a 
jail, or in any human habitation." [Testimony'of Dr. Joseph M. 
Smitli.J 
" New York has innumerable tenant houses, with one or more 
families in every room, often numbering two and even three hun- 
dred men, women and children; all of whom eat, sleep and cook 
in their respective apartments of some 12 to 15 feet square, includ- 
ing the garrets and cellars. In very many of these houses, cover- 
ing the entire lots, access to the air, or its free circulation, is a 
physical impossibility; the morbid exhalations from so many 
bodies, to say nothing of the abounding filth and accumulating 
odors, inevitable under such circumstances, render the atmosphere 
analogous to that of an uncleaned sewer, which receives the offal, 
refuse and excrement of the neighborhood." [Dr. D. Meredith 
Reese. J 
" There is another important fact to which I wish to call at- 
tention, and that is : The underground residences of the people is 
a sad calamity to this city, and this remark I would have printed 
in large letters. It is astonishing to see how diseases are super- 
induced by living under ground. This under-tenantry is a great No. 59.] 
13 
source of the increase and extension of typhoid forms of disease. 
It is wonderful that the people of New York are not satisfied to 
be in the ground when they are dead, but they want to be in the 
ground before they are half born, by living underneath. 
New York was more healthy when there was more vegetable 
life about it. Every tree that you cut down, you diminish the 
quantity of vital air for this city." [Senate Document No. 49, 
Testimony of J. W. Francis, M. D.J 
" The first Napoleon caused more deaths than all the earth- 
quakes since the days of Noah ; the cupidity of ship-owners and 
the supineness of sailors have lost more ships and lives than all 
the storms that ever blew ; the filthy state of our towns sends more 
souls to Hades than all put together. Plague, pestilence, war and 
famine yield to dirt." [From " Water Everywhere," an article in 
No. 85 of All the Year Round, edited by Charles Dickens.] 
The effect of Contracted House Room upon Health.-Abstract of 
Sanitary Survey, 1859. 
Total No. 
of- houses 
Total 
Wards. 
occupied as 
dwellings. 
Rooms. 
Families. 
Adults. 
Children. 
No. of 
persons. 
1--.. 
504 
17,643 
2,636 
5,974 
4,623 
10,597 
2.... 
176 
10,864 
339 
2.305 
473 
2,778 
3.... 
220 
9,118 
597 
3,677 
806 
4,483 
4__._ 
1,105 
15,825 
4,551 
13,654 
6,776 
20,430 
5 
1,606 
16.921, 
2,796 
14,484 
6,172 
20,656 
6.... 
1,076 
13,517 
5,189 
15,417 
7,427 
22,844 
7__.A 
2,256 
24,589 
6,755 
18,957 
11,269 
30,226 
8.... 
2,518 
27,990 
7,223 
23,127 
11,178 
34,305 
9.... 
3,501 
41.565 
8,661 
28,131 
15,585 
43,716 
10.... 
1,838 
21,809 
6,444 
16,540 
9,425 
25,965 
11.... 
2,594 
41,729 
13,012 
31,287 
21,839 
53,126 
12.... 
2,303 
17,831 
3,397 
11.405 
9,559 
20,964 
13 
1,642 
19,557 
6,340 
16.182 
9,720 
25,892 
14.... 
1,452 
18,654 
6,120 
18,343 
9,302 
27,645 
15.... 
2,443 
32,024 
4,006 
18,346 
8,304 
26,650 
16.... 
3,363 
43,793 
9,023 
27,445 
16.434 
44,079 
17.... 
3,545 
52,464 
15,220 
40,638 
24,251 
64,889 
18.... 
3,329 
47,982 
9,717 
33,716 
18,007 
51,723 
19.... 
1,880 
17,441 
4,112 
11,542 
9,337 
20,879 
20.... 
3,925 
52,696 
16,216 
32,815 
23,344 
56,159 
21 
2,971 
38,079 
7,719 
25,778 
13,320 
39,098 
22.... 
2,771 
24,908 
5,589 
15,520 
10,202 
25,722 
47,018 
606,981 
145,662 
425,283 
247,353 
672,826 
[Street Inspector's Report, 1861.] 14 
[Assembly 
"As families herd together in the same building, there are found 
those brutal debasements which have made famous the 'tenement 
houses' of New York, where as many as one hundred and twenty 
distinct families lived under the same roof, and where there were 
thirteen thousand six hundred and twenty three houses which 
averaged nearly six families each, and thus, three-fourths of the 
population of the metropolis of the United States of North America 
lived in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred and fifty- 
nine, with the result of its being the sickliest of all the large cities 
of the civilized world ; while Philadelphia, but eighty-sixty miles 
away, with hotter summers, and sometimes colder winters, without 
that proximity to the sea, which is so fruitful of sanitary blessings, 
is one of the healthiest cities of the Union. But Philadelphia has 
a house to every six persons, while New York, has but 'one to 
every thirteen.' Such facts as these, prove on a large scale, that 
the more house-room a community has, the more healthful will 
that community be. 
Another great fact is, that there are three times the number of 
deaths in proportion to the population, in those parts of the city 
where the poorest, and consequently the most persons live together 
in the same house, as compared with the mortality where nearly 
every family lives in a dwelling of its own. For example, in the 
first ward of the city of New York, where almost all are poor, one 
person died out of every twenty-two, while in the fifteenth ward, 
where the inhabitants live mostly to themselves in large roomy 
buildings, only one died out of every seventy 1" [Dr. Hall on 
sleep, New York, 1861, pp. 23, 24.] 
Should be dry, perfectly clean, admissible to light and air, capa- 
ble of complete ventilation, and of a size sufficient to contain a 
full supply of pure air for all the persons who woo within them 
tired nature's sweet restorer. 
" The insensible perspiration from a sleeper during the night is 
of itself enough to taint the atmosphere of a whole room, even a 
large one, as almost every reader has noticed on entering a sleep- 
ing chamber in the morning, after having come directly from the 
out-door air; and it is the breathing and rebreathing of an atmo- 
sphere contaminated in the variety of ways alluded to, which 
makes the night the time of attack of the great majority of violent 
human ailments ; it is this which fires the train of impending dis- 
ease, and which would have been deferred, if not entirely warded 
off, with the advantages of a pure chamber. It is from these close 
bedrooms that come the racking pains of fever, its torturing thirst 
and speedy death; this it is which wakes up the cholera morbus, 
the cramp colic, the bilious diarrhoea, and the multitudes of other 
ailments-which surprise us in the night time, and from which, it is 
worthy of repetition, a night of good sleep in a clean, pure and 
SLEEPING APARTMENTS No. 59.J 
15 
well-ventilated chamber would have effected a happy deliverance, 
as expressed in the familiar phrase of "sleeping it off." 
It is not known as extensively as it ought to be, that if the efflu- 
via which escape from the human body in a close room are breathed 
by another person, some of the most incurable forms of disease 
result therefrom, especially the " low fevers," as they are called, 
as well as " typhoid," ailments which oppress the whole man, 
putrify the blood, take away all sense and feeling, when muttering 
delirium comes on, to be followed apace by a mortal stupor, and 
the man passes away, but " makes no sign." All must look upon 
such a death with shrinking, and yet it is frequent in the abodes 
of the poor, whom hard necessity compels to huddle together like 
pigs in a pen. Lesser degrees of this crowding together will have 
a proportionate ill effect, without the possibility of avoidance. 
The whelming avalanche does not the less come because its motion 
is not at first perceivable, and as inevitably will come the destruc- 
tive effects of crowded sleeping apartments, not only curtailing 
the health, and vigor, and life of sleepers themselves, but in per- 
petrating human infirmity on the innocent ones to whom being is 
given under the circumstances. I Dr. Hall on Sleep. New York, 
1861. pp. 70, 71, 72.] 
DEFECTIVE SEWERAGE, 
Is a prolific source of disease and death, both in city and country. 
Dr. Greenhow in an official paper on " the preventability of 
certain kinds of death," published in London, eighteen hundred and 
fifty-eight, states, that one-half of the deaths occuring in a certain 
district within a period of seven years, were of persons under 
twenty years of age, and that such a result- 
" Does not require large aggregations of impurity for develop- 
ment. A neglected sewer, ash-pit or cess-pool, an unsound soil 
pipe, whether in town or country, may be all that is required. 
The farm-house or laborer's cottage, nay, the mansion of the 
squire, though situated in the most healthy district, if putrefying 
animal and vegetable refuse is permitted to taint its immediate 
atmosphere, is as liable to be invaded by fever as the town-dwell- 
ing in a close alley. 
The taint of the atmosphere in the vicinity of fermenting and 
decaying matter, proceeds chiefly, from the gasses, but partly, also, 
from organic matter in a state of active decomposition. Letherby 
& Baker most thoroughly demonstrate, not only how certainly 
sewerage gasses affect both health and life, but how a small pro 
portion of the gasses are capable of extinguishing life, giving rise 
to forms of disease, according to the intensity and duration of 
their administration." [Dr. Hall on Sleep, New York, 1861, pp. 
90, 91. 16 
[Assembly 
INFANT MORTALITY. 
Sparta, in a barbarous age, assumed the parentage and directed 
the education of its children, and became a nation of athletes. 
Civilized and Christian America ignores the existence of the 
millions that make up its infant population, and is rearing a race 
of dwarfs and idiots to mingle with the stream of human life that 
bears upon its heaving tides the hopes of the patriot and the faith 
of the Christian. 
The statistics of infant mortality in the city of New York are 
absolutely astounding, and the number of children who have 
escaped the assaults of death, not by making a resolute fight, and 
coming off with the honors and trophies of victory, but by capitu- 
lation after sack and pillage, is almost incredible. 
Weak, puny and half imbecile children, pale victims of disease, 
crowd the tenements of the poor, and are not unfrequent in the 
dwellings of the middle classes and the mansions of the rich. 
A correspondent of the New York World having visited 
Randall's Island, where there are about eight hundred idiotic 
children maintained by public charity, says: 
" In a single room, perhaps eighteen by twenty-eight feet in 
area, I found thirty-seven imbecile children, seated closely to- 
gether on benches and chairs arranged around the room; some 
rocking themselves incessantly to and fro, some screaming at the 
top of their voices, some yelling out a laugh, itself the token of a 
vacant mind; others moaned and muttered, or emitted an un- 
earthly noise, intended for music. Here they chattered and 
quarreled, and grinned their ghastly smiles, seemingly under little 
restraint other than might be needed to keep them glued to one 
spot." 
It is further stated that " this room also is unclean and noisome, 
the floor reeks with a nauseating stench, the air is loathsomely 
putrid, poisoning the 'the breath of life,' which the inmates take 
impure only to give back impurer; scrofulous sores saturate their 
clothing by their purulent issues. What a horrible picture this 
is 1 What a fearful condition these helpless and miserable child- 
ren are now in? * * * For the sake of our character as a 
Christian people, whose welcome duties are philanthropy and 
active benevolence, as well as for the sake of the suffering child- 
ren, it is to be hoped that the reform is not far off, that the bene- 
ficent agencies may soon be put in operation that shall consummate 
the humane work." [Dr. Hall on Sleep, New York. 1861, pp. 
47, 48.J No. 59.J 
17 
Table of mortality in the city of New York^for the fifty years between 
1804 and 1853, inclusive. Classified according to age. 
Still-born and premature births 24,164 
Of one year and under 78,762 
Bet ween one and two years 40,281 
do two and five years 32,896 
do five and ten years 14,351 
do ten and twenty years 14,820 
do twenty and thirty years 41,740 
do thirty and forty years 41,351 
do forty and fifty years 29,114 
do fifty and sixty years 17,948 
do sixty and seventy years. 12,879 
do seventy and eighty years 8,278 
do • eighty and ninety years 3,769 
do ninety and a hundred years 813 
Of one hundred and upwards 105 
Ages unknown 1,971 
Total 363,242 
Infant mortality for the years 1854, 1855 and 1856. 
In 1854, still-born and premature births,. 2,050 
do under one year 7,116 
do between one and two years 3,697 
do between two and five years 2,810 
do total under five years 15,673 
do total above five years .. 12,895 
do total mortality 28,568 
In 1855, still-born and premature births 1,938 
do under one year 6,399 
do between one and two years 3,144 
do between two and five years 2,582 
do total under five years.. 14,063 
do total above five years 8,979 
do total mortality 23,042 
[Assembly, No. 59.] 18 
Assembly 
In 1856, still-born and premature births 1,943 
do under one year 6,050 
do between one and two years . 2,937 
do between two and five years 2,443 
do total under five years 13,373 
do total above five years 8,285 
do total mortality 21,658 
In the 3 years, 1854, '55 and '56: 
Total under 5 years.. 43,109 
Total above 5 years 30,159 
Total mortality 73,268 
Total number of deaths reported for 1856 21,658 
Of which there were children under 5 years 13,373 
Viz: Under 1 year....... 7,993 
From 1 to 2 years 2,937 
From 2 to 5 years .......... 2,443 
Total 13,373 
Under 5 years, 13,375, being nearly g of the total number of deaths, 
do 2 years, 10,930, being over | do do do 
do 1 year, 7,993, being nearly | do do do 
" In the city of New York, as will appear by the foregoing sta- 
tistical table, the whole mortality of the last half century amount- 
ed to 363,242 (including the still-born.) while the number of deaths 
under 5 years of age, is shown by the same table to have been 
176,043, which is nearly 49 per cent, of the entire mortality of the 
city, and this is for fifty consecutive years. As in New York, so 
in other large cities, the proportion of infant mortality will be 
found to vary inconsiderably, if at all, so that it may be safely 
estimated that one-half of the population enumerated in* the cen- 
sus, die before the age of five years; and hence the annual infant 
mortality includes little short of a moiety of the human race, unless 
it can be shown to be greater in our large cities than through the 
country and through the world. 
Of the fearful increase of infant mortality in New York, regard- 
ing this as a type of other cities, we have the same statistical table. 
In the year 1853, the deaths under 5 years numbered 12,963, 
while in 1843 only 4,588 such deaths occurred, showing the appal- 
ling increase of 8,375 within ten years, which is vastly beyond the No. 59. 
19 
proportional increase of the population of the city during the 
decennial period,'as shown by the census. Moreover, this 
increased infant mortality in 1853, as compared with 1843, is in 
a ratio very far beyond that of the aggregate of deaths in persons 
of all ages, in each of these years respectively, found in the same 
table. 
"The deaths under five years, in 1853, were 12,963; while the 
deaths of all others in the city, of every age, numbered only 
9,739; so that the infant mortality exceeded all the other inter- 
ments for that year by 3,224 ! This single fact exibits in a striking 
light the importance of the subject of infant mortality, in view of 
its frightful extent and its alarming increase within 10 years. 
In 1843, the infant mortality exceeded the half of the aggregate 
mortality of the city by only a few hundreds; but in 1853 the ex- 
cess over one-half the entire number of interments of all ages in 
the city reaches as many thousands. 
"Why should infant mortality in American cities be greater 
than even Paris! 8 per cent above Glasgow, 10 per cent above 
Liverpool, and nearly 13 per cent greater than in London? Why 
should it be increasing here, and diminishing there? Infant mor- 
tality has attained gigantic proportions among us, and is increas- 
ing with amazing rapidity; and this, too. when the general salu- 
brity of our climate, and the facilities for sustaining and supporting 
life, with us, are superior to those possessed by any other country 
on the globe. 
" By the table, it will be apparent that the mortality of infants 
under one year old, greatly exceeds that occurring between one 
year and five years of age ; while the mortality under two years is 
nearly four times that between two and five years. Moreover, 
the number of children who die under five years of age, is greater 
than the whole mortality between five and sixty years of age! 
Hence the perils of life during theyiue years of infancy are greater 
than during the fifty-five years subsequent to that age. That this 
horrible fatality is a necessary evil, we should be slow to admit. 
"Is there any remedy for this deplorable and desolating scourge? 
The habitations of the poorer classes of our population are, for 
the most part, in narrow contracted alleys, filthy courts, or under- 
ground cellars; or at best, in what are called tenement houses, in 
the miserable apartments of which thousands of families, each, cook, 
eat and sleep, in a single room, without the light, ventilation or 
cleanliness essential to the life of either parents or children. 
Under such adverse circumstances, often destitute of wholesome 
food, comfortable clothing, or necessary fuel, the children of such 
families sicken, pine away and die prematurely, to an extent wholly 
unappreciated by the public, and unrelieved by the philanthropy 
of either the church or the State. 
"Nor will this increasing source of our infant, mortality be ar- 
rested, until the civil authorities shall, by public law, require the 
erection of dwellings for the poor, in accordance with the laws of 20 
Assembly 
health and life; and until, in all our cities, there shall he a sani- 
tary medical police, whose duty it shall be to enforce such laws. 
No medical treatment can, by possibility, arrest diseases, or di- 
minish their fatality, while the victims are found in the squalid 
and filthy abodes of the indigent, from which pure air, and often 
the light of heaven, are excluded, as among the wretched multi- 
tudes of our 'cellar population,' who furnish annually, so large a 
share of our infant mortality. 
" It now only remains, in view of the extent and increase of 
infant mortality in large cities which we have shown to exist, that 
our profession and the public should be fully impressed with the 
facts, which observation and experience will fully corroborate, 
that such mortality needs not and ought not any longer to be per- 
petuated. And if, as Ave respectfully submit, the sources and 
causes whence the appalling fatality in infancy and childhood 
have been demonstrated to flow, be such as are removable by the 
instrumentality of public and private hygiene, and the general in- 
troduction of sanitary reforms into the popular creed and prac- 
tice, then we may legitimately urge the means and measures sug- 
gested for its diminution as eminently worthy of consideration and 
regard." [Report on Infant Mortality in Large Cities, by I). Mere- 
dith Reese, M. D., LL. D.] 
" Most of the children who arrive in this city from foreign ports, 
although suffering from the effects of a protracted voyage, bad 
accommodations and worse fare, do not bring with them any 
marked disease, beyond those which, with proper care, nursing, 
and wholesome air, could not be easily overcome. The causes, 
then, of this excessive mortality must be sought for in this city, 
and are readily traceable to the wretched habitations in which 
parentsand children are forced to take up their abode; in the 
contracted alleys, the underground, murky, and pestilential cel- 
lars, the tenement house, with its hundreds of occupants, where 
each cook, eat, and sleep in a single room, without light or venti- 
lation, surrounded with filth, an atmosphere foul, foetid and deadly, 
with none to console with or advise them, or to apply to for relief 
when disease invades them. How is this state of things, which 
marks with shame the great city of New York, to be remedied? 
The power of remedy does not rest in me, nor in the department 
over which I have the honor to preside.'' [Report of Street In- 
spector, 1861.] 
SUN-LIGHT 
Is the most powerful purifying and renovating agent in nature, 
and its exclusion from human habitations, either by the rude 
walls and coarse partitions that constitute the poor man's home, 
or by the purple drapery that hangs in gorgeous folds over the 
casements of the rich, is a positive sin. One " ray of pure unsullied 
sunlight" streaming through windows fringed with roses and 
o o o o No. 59. 
21 
woodbine, invests the place with a glory it can never receive from 
hangings of crimson and gold. 
" The action of light on health is not less important than that 
of other agencies which constantly act upon as. This is best evi- 
denced in the vital depression, morbid sensibility, nervousness, 
and impoverishment of blood which the protracted exclusion of 
light from the body almost invariably induces. All who are bless- 
ed with sight must feel the animating power of the brilliant day 
upon the mind ; but we may well suppose that the benevolence of 
the Creator toward ourselves is not limited in this respect to our 
ability to see, and it is beyond question that color acts upon the 
body irrespective of its effects upon the mind; it exists not mere- 
ly to please the eye, but exerts a direct influence on chemistry 
and life. 
It is in vain to look for vigorous development in our children, if 
they are not permitted fully to enjoy the glories of the boundless 
azure and the golden brilliancy of the opening sky, through all the 
changes of the day, and of the season, as Time rolls along with 
them in his chariot of light. 
The absence of direct sun-light, co-operating with insufficient 
exercise and want of fresh air, favors deformity and morbid devel- 
opment both in the mind and the body. As without direct light 
the vegetable world would no longer purify the air breathed by 
animals, so neither would the oxygen received by the lungs effect 
the healthful changes of the blood; the blood-cells would remain 
imperfect, and the whole body would degenerate like a blanched 
plant. 
It is not wonderful that barbarians that walk freely in the light 
should seldom see deformity, nor is it surprising that among the 
inhabitants of cellars and dark alleys, beauty disappears, while 
distortion takes its place. Beauty and health are nearly related, 
and both are so far dependent upon light, that every living thing 
formed to move under the guidance of sight becomes diseased and 
deformed when precluded from the full enjoyment of the day." 
[Health, Disease and Remedy. By George Moore, M. D., Member 
of the Royal College of Physicians.] 
"The human body, besides its grosser wants of food and cover- 
ing, has its more delicate needs, robbed of which it perishes, more 
slowly, but as surely, as when frozen or starved. One of these 
subtle but absolute conditions of health is light. Without light 
the body of a blind man pines as pines a tree without light. 
Without light the human body perishes-with insufficient light it 
droops. Against this law of nature it is not only impious but idi- 
otic to struggle. Almighty God made man so, and so he will 
remain while the world lasts." [Charles Reade-Never too Late 
to Mend.] 
"It is manifestly the duty of the department of public health to 
have some direction over the supply of light in human abodes, 22 
[Assembly 
whether in dwellings or in work shops, or in schools or other places 
of public assemblage. We have no laws in our country forbidding 
the use of any number of windows, as was for a long period the 
case in Great Britain, and no apology can be offered for a defi- 
ciency in the supply of light; and could all human abodes in this 
city be well supplied with light, we should see vastly less of scrof- 
ulous diseases, and vastly less of opthalmies-less in fact of all 
diseases of debility, and less of crime. The supply of light and 
air go together; where one is supplied, the other is sure to exist. 
A distinguished foreign writer has remarked thatyerers and crime 
spring up and flourish in the same localities, and that they are 
indigenous productions of the same soil. Let moralists account 
for it how they may, the experience of all observers confirms the 
fact, that deeds of darkness and crime occur almost spontaneously 
among the inhabitants of unlighted human abodes. The depress- 
ing effect of the continued absence of sunlight is so great, that the 
free use of artificial and alcoholic stimuli is almost inevitable 
among the tenants of unlighted habitations." [Testimony of 
Elisha Harris, M. D., Senate Document, No. 49, 1859.J 
SCHOOL ROOMS. 
If there is one aspect of this subject of public health more revolt- 
ing than any other, it is the one in which children are exhibited 
in some of the public and private school rooms in the city and 
State, (for this is not confined to the city of New York, but exists 
within the district, and under the observation of every member of 
this House.) 
It may well be doubted, whether the meager amount of educa- 
tion obtained in these schools, is a sufficient compensation for the 
ill health, personal deformity, depraved tastes, impure habits, and 
insensibility to the highest forms of physical and moral beauty, 
which such circumstances, and such surroundings are certain to 
produce. It might perhaps be demonstrated that, low, damp, dark, 
dirty and ill ventilated school rooms, instead of being helpers in 
the great work of human improvement, are positive injuries to 
society; because, while they engender disease, produce deformity, 
and shorten life, they lower, and degrade, and bring down to the 
level of animal desires and brutish instincts, the exalted idea of 
human intelligence, and the holy sentiment of religious hope and 
trust. The school room should give visible expression to pure 
and lofty thought, and into its walls and towers the spirit of piety 
and devotion be incorporated. It is not without a purpose that 
learning has been represented to us under forms of transcendent 
beauty, with its seats fixed in pleasant places, by the side of No. 59.] 
23 
sparkling fountains, and amid groves garlanded with roses and 
amaranth. 
It is not without a purpose that religion has been invested with 
pure and shining robes, crowned with glory, and with golden harp 
filling the courts of Heaven with praise. 
Physical beauty is a power in the world, before which the high- 
est human intelligence bows in homage. Goodness has superior 
charms, virtue stronger attractions, and wisdom greater power, 
when moulded into forms of beauty, and draped in the flowing 
robes of elegance and grace. For this reason let children, while 
being introduced to the temple of knowledge, and into the presence 
of its priesthood, be surrounded with objects of grace and beauty, 
be permitted to enjoy the bounties of nature, see the glories of 
sunlight, and breathe the pure air of Heaven. 
" One of the worst features in the cellar habitations is the fact 
that schools are still kept in them to an incredible extent, and to 
the incalculable deterioration of the health and morals of the chil- 
dren. 
" These schools ought to be inspected and reported upon by the 
proper authorities, who should, without hesitation, suppress those 
kept in places unhealthy to the children. 
"We have heard a teacher in one of these low-ceiled basement 
school rooms, which usually contained three hundred of these 
little beings confined within the narrow space six hours a day, 
complain severely of the sufferings she endured for want of fresh 
air; and this continued for months and years. .She seemed aware 
of the cause of the evil, but the pale and puny children had to 
suffer in silence, and droop without relief. 
" One of the largest and most modern of the " ward schools " of 
New York was originally intended to accommodate only 1,000 
pupils, but into which 1,400 have actually been suffered to be 
crammed, and that, too, without an attempt at systematic venti- 
lation. The building is 85 feet long by 45 feet wide and GO feet 
high from the ground to the peak of the roof, so that were there 
no floors, or desks, or partition walls, or pupils, or teachers, there 
would be about 229,500 feet of cubic air, giving for each individ- 
ual 164 feet, which, according to computations before given, would 
be re-inhaled every forty minutes, or nine times during the six 
school hours. [J. H. Griscom, M. D., Uses and Abuses of Air.] 
" Of all the various edifices in which a number of persons are 
gathered together, and for whose protection and benefit an efficient 
system of ventilation is necessary, none are of such paramount 24 
[Assemble 
importance as school houses, and none have been so generally, and 
we might add so cruelly, neglected. 
The unrenewed air of a school room soon becomes charged with 
the noxious exhalations both from the lungs and the skin. The 
latter organ, in the vast majority of the poorer children, and in 
not a few of the wealthier Hass, becomes, for want of due atten- 
tion. almost coated with perspirable and other matters, and is a 
source of continued poisoning of the air of an ill-ventilated room. 
The originally indolent boy becomes at school a hater of lessons 
and books, associating as he docs with it all that is wearisome and 
dull; while the boy desirous to learn, and emulous of distinction, 
becomes exhausted by his brain-work, and his nervous system 
acquires a morbid sensibility which remains with him during all 
his after life." [Report on the Importance and Economy of Sani- 
tary Measures to Cities. By John Bell, M. D., of Philadelphia. J 
A striking illustration of the necessity of reforming the Health 
Department of New York, is found in the constant presence within 
its limits of 
small POX. 
In the whole list of diseases which afflict the human race, and 
reduce its numbers, none is more under the control of medical and 
sanitary science than this. 
An absolute preventive is within the reach of every one, and, 
if used with care and precision upon all the members of every 
family in the city, the disease would in one generation become 
extinct, and humanity relieved of one of its deadliest scourges. 
Provision should be made by law for the vaccination (compul- 
sory, if necessary,) of every person in the State ; and the act 
should be stringently enforced, until this loathesome malady shall 
be extirpated from the land. 
Notwithstanding small pox may be excluded from the city, and 
its existence prevented, the people have become so familiarised to 
the fact of its constant presence, that it is looked upon as the 
inevitable result of conditions over which human laws have no 
control. How else can we account for their willingness to submit 
to such a state of things as Dr. Harris describes in his testimony 
before the Senate Committee of 1859. 
" We have continually in our streets, exposed too often to the 
public gaze, and daily exposing a vast population to disease, cases 
of infectious or contagious diseases ; even the small pox not unfre- 
quently can be detected beneath a veiled hat or bonnet in our city 
railroad cars. Small pox repeatedly, day after day, has been con- 
veyed to the Staten Island Quarantine hospitals by the public ferry 
boats. The cases wander to the boat under some information or 
advice sufficient to lead them thither, and in that manner the 
crowds in our city, as well as the crowds upon the ferry boats, are 
frequently exposed to that very contagious, and loathsome disease. No. 59.] 
25 
The same is true of some other forms of disease that are infectious, 
which are not under special surveillance in the city. Small pox 
not unfrequently occurs in the residences of our best families, most 
remote from the poor. 
Small pox frequently occurs in our hotels, and among the mul- 
titudes of strangers visiting our city ; and worst of all, that most 
loathsome malady is continually being diffused throughout the 
entire length and breadth of our country, by means of persons 
and goods that have here become contaminated. 
I have personal knowledge of a number of such instances, in 
which merchants and business men, strangers and families have, 
on visiting the city, returned to their homes in our own and other 
States infected with small pox themselves, and, unfortunately, 
infecting whole communities in distant localities; indeed, as regards 
small pox, the city of New York has become a great pest-centre, 
from whence that dreadful malady is widely and continually diffused 
throughout the country." 
The constant number of cases of small pox in the city of New 
York during the winter and spring months, is stated by competent 
medical authority to be about one hundred] and the weekly deaths 
about ten. The whole number of small pox patients, ig. stated by 
the same authority to be not less than five thousand per annum, and 
this condition of the city has existed for many years without exci- 
ting special alarm. That small pox should exist in the city at all, 
is a reproach to the public authorities; that it should be recog- 
nized and regarded as one of the constant and daily recurring dis- 
eases to which the people are necessarily exposed and subjected, 
is proof that a Board of Health able to grapple with, and sub- 
due this, and other diseases, is imperatively demanded for the 
safety of the people, and the prosperity of the city. 
Coeval with the birth of commerce, the subject of 
QUARANTINE 
Has engaged the attention of mankind from the earliest periods. 
The barbarous laws of those nations of antiquity which condemned 
to instant death, strangers landing, or even cast by shipwreck on 
their shores, may have been founded in the fear of pestilence, and 
thus formed the inception of the idea of quarantine. Be this as it 
may, we have authority for the belief that " so far back as the age 
of Plato," a knowledge of the contagious power of certain diseases 
was general among the nations, and that precautions were taken 
to prevent their spread. [Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages, 
pp. 53, 54, &c.] 
If we turn to the Mosaic record, we find, among the Jews, the 26 
Assembly 
most minute regulations existing to prevent the spread of pesti- 
lence by the establishment of an internal quarantine, and the 
observance of precautionary measures, some of which, science in 
its highest development, has adopted and stamped with the mark 
of its approval. [Leviticus, chap. 13 and 14.] 
But, without stopping to note the progress of sanitary science 
in the ages anterior to and immediately following the birth of 
Christ, or the gradual extension of quarantine regulations among 
the nations of Europe in the middle ages, we come directly to the 
present day, and in particular to the consideration of the present 
quarantine system in this State. 
"The present quarantine system has proved itself so utterly 
inefficient and mischievous, that an entire revolution is called for 
by all classes of our citizens, and especially by our shipping and 
commercial men, who are the most severe sufferers by the severe 
and worthless restrictions of an old and obsolete system, which is 
throughout a burlesque on sanitary science, and worthy only of the 
dark ages of barbarism." [Testimony of Dr. D. Meredith Beese, 
Senate Doc. No. 49, 1859.] 
Before fhe same committee, Dr. Beese also speaks of " the im- 
becility and ignorance which characterise our present quarantine 
laws-more tyrannical and oppressive than any free country or 
city on the globe attempts to enforce, and directly opposed to 
the teachings of experience and of all enlightened science, and 
hence opposed and denounced by scientific men in all parts of 
Christendom." 
"Our quarantine system is becoming such an eyesore, that I 
prefer to answer the question by stating broadly that it were well 
for the sanitary interests of the city of New York if to-day the 
whole system were entirely abolished. * * * Yet, situated 
as the port of New York is, a rational quarantine against yellow 
fever is a necessity of expediency for which our citizens must 
make ample provisions. It is high time that a more rational and 
just external sanitary system were provided for the port of New 
York; and I believe that such a quarantine system, based upon 
medical facts, and scientific principles, may and should be imme- 
diately provided by our State Legislature. The quarantine or 
external sanitary system of the port, needs to be more directly 
connected with the internal or civic sanitary system of New 
York, and the two departments should be under the advisory 
direction of a special scientific commissioner. But the safety of 
the city, as well as the great interests of commerce, demand that 
our quarantine system be entirely re-cast and revised, and that 
the necessary restrictive regulations of this our external sanitary 
system be so simplified, and so intelligently and honestly admin- No. 59.] 
27 
istered, that the temptations to evasion of the laws be greatly 
diminished, and the rights and interests of commerce shall be 
justly guarded, while the health of the city may actually be insured 
against exotic pestilence. All this will be effectually accomplished 
whenever the city and port of New York establishes a rational 
sanitary system upon the reliable basis of science and sound 
medical experience. Until then, the city of New York will not 
be protected from infectious pestilential diseases, much less will our 
vast population be safe from the domestic causes of disease and 
death, that now give this city such an ignoble reputation for self- 
created insalubrity." [Testimony of Dr. E. Harris, Senate Doc. 
No. 49, 1859.] 
" We know that we have what is called a quarantine, which, in 
my judgment, is nothing more than a place where disease and 
contagion is contracted, which is constantly being let loose upon 
the city. I have been conversant with quarantine for a good 
many years, in fact, ever since I have been in the medical profes- 
sion, and that is now twenty years." [Testimony of Dr. James 
R. Wood, Senate Doc. No. 49, 1859.J 
It needs no argument to prove that, to a city like New York, 
so largely dependent as it is upon commerce for its prosperity, an 
ill-advised and badly administered system of quarantine must 
prove ruinous to almost every department of private enterprise 
or public wealth. The ramifications of trade are so extensive, 
that not only the shipowner and importer, but the merchant, the 
retailer, the producer, the consumer, is made to suffer in the most 
sensitive of all parts-his pocket-by every unjust or unneces- 
sary restriction upon commerce. But it is not alone these con- 
siderations which should weigh with the Legislature. Shall not 
the friendless, destitute stranger, struck down by a formidable 
malady just as he approaches that land of liberty to which he 
looks for the enjoyment of rights denied to him in his native land, 
command our sympathy, and engage our best efforts in his behalf? 
Let us not forget that to the strong arms and hard hands of the 
emigrants, our city, state, and country, owes no inconsiderable 
degree of credit for its amazing increase of population, and its 
advancement in the material elements which have done so much 
to produce our present greatness. 
For the creation of the Board of Commissioners of Emigration, 
the foreign born residents of our whole country owe an everlast- 
ing debt of gratitude. Let not the work stop here, but let the 
State, by entrusting the care of these emigrants while necessarily 
detained at quarantine to the hands of a humane and competent 
authority, take the only step which remains to place the city of 28 
[Assembly 
New York as far in advance of the other cities of this continent, 
as respects the care of its emigrants, as it is in the number which 
annually enters its harbor. 
The bill herewith presented, does not interfere with the ap- 
pointment, or with the functions of the health officer, as now pro- 
vided by law. He is made, ex officio, a member of the commis- 
sion, and is subject to its direction only as he now is to the exist- 
ing Commissioners of Health. 
Another feature is worthy of notice. By existing laws, the 
city of Brooklyn, and the counties of Kings and Richmond, have 
no representation in the Board of Commissioners of Health, and 
consequently no voice in the direction of quarantine affairs by 
said board. By the bill recommended, Kings county will have 
two members, and Richmond one, in the Metropolitan Board; 
thus giving to these counties their due proportion of influence, 
not only in the regulation of quarantine affairs, but in all matters 
affecting the health of said counties. 
STATISTICS OF BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATHS. 
The importance of requiring a thorough registration of these 
statistics is so well set forth in the following extracts from an 
editorial article in the New York Commercial Advertiser for Jan. 
31, 1861, that the committee have not thought it necessary to 
increase the bulk of their report by further expansion of the 
subject: 
" That it is important to have tho.se statistics, we need not un- 
dertake to prove. The progress of society demands that all facts 
occurring, as well as phenomena observed, should be noted down, 
and the information thus collected should be transmitted to some 
authorized party, who is competent to classify the items, and from 
them deduce the laws or principles appertaining thereto. The 
operation is simply a more extensive system of book-keeping, 
where every transaction is posted up under a few general accounts. 
If statistics ever err, it is because they have not been collected 
in sufficient abundance, or properly arranged. They are danger- 
ous precisely in the sense in which ' a little learning is a dangerous 
thing." The remedy in both cases is to 1 drink deep,' in which 
event no alarm may be felt. 
"The predjudice usually entertained against facts and figures 
is a very silly one. It must not be forgotten that out of those 
dry, dull and unexciting collections of numerals are evolved dis- No. 59.] 
29 
coveries the most important to our social and political well being. 
Even the laws which govern the universe, from the formation of a 
dew-drop to the revolution of a comet-laws that are as beautiful 
as they are simple and powerful-are ascertained to exist only in 
consequence of long and carefully amassing just such materials. 
The greatest astronomers living'may be set down as little more 
than patient observers and thorough statisticians. 
" Society, accordingly, wants and must have full and trustworthy 
collections of facts on every subject that is possible to engage the 
attention of the human mind. But the most important of them 
must first be supplied; and prominent among these are the statis- 
tics relating to births, deaths and marriages. It naturally goes 
for information to those who are best qualified to impart it. In 
relation to the first and second it applies to the physician; for the 
last it asks the clergyman, or whoever else may be authorized by 
law to perform the marriage ceremony. 
"It is unnecessary to say that the object of such a law is not 
to get at individual secrets, but to arrive at general truths. When 
the police justice reports the various cases coming before him, the 
public pay no attention to John Smith or John Brown. They de- 
sire classes, not individuals; aggregates, not details; general 
principles, not isolated facts. In doing so, ordinary propriety will 
point out the necessity of intruding into private affairs as little as 
is consistent with the general object in view. At the same time, 
the publicity of marriage is only second in importance to the 
institution itself. Human laws must take cognizance of the cere- 
mony, unless all the protection thrown round the family be removed. 
And to do this certain matters must be commtmicated that might 
otherwise be considered as belonging to the domain of private 
secrets. Providing against any unnecessary exposure, the public 
good often requires that these should be made known to the officers 
of the law. We need not go further in attempting to prove what 
must commend itself to the judgment of every intelligent reader. 
" If, however, after providing such safeguards, the clergy of any 
denomination shall refuse obedience to the law, they must be 
brought to a different state of feeling by the exercise of a little 
gentle coercion, ft is unnecessary in these days to hang, burn, 
pillory, or even imprison such offenders. Should they see fit to 
defy the law, it only requires to remind them that the power which 
has given them authority to perform legal marriage, can readily 30 
Assembly 
deprive them of it. This will be found to have a most wholesome 
effect. The present is a somewhat unsuitable time for the clergy 
to place themselves in a position of antagonism to the State gov- 
ernment : but this is an affair of their own, not ours. The facts 
are urgently needed ; and if these men will refuse to furnish 
them, the consequences must remain with themselves.'' 
" The Annual Report of the City Inspector of New York, for 
the year 1860, has just appeared. 
"It appears that the city was unusually healthy during the past 
year, being visited with no epidemic except scarlet fever, which 
was not severe or of long duration. Still the aggregate number 
of deaths was 22,710, being an increase of 1,065 over the year 
1859, and giving a percentage, according to the recent census, of 
1 in 36 of its population. This is the highest death-rate of any 
civilized city in the world, and equals that of many cities during 
the prevalence of such epidemics as cholera, yellow fever, Ac. 
"Had the public health of New York equalled that of London 
in 1860, more than 2,000 of its citizens, now in their graves, would 
have been living, and upwards of 52,000 cases of sickness would 
have been prevented. To one so accustomed as the City Inspect- 
or to count mortality statistics by the thousand, this difference 
may seem slight, but to the philanthropist such figures are of ter- 
rible significance. In his efforts to explain the high mortality of 
the city, the City Inspector takes the ground that the death-rate 
of a city must increase in a direct ratio with the increase of its 
population, and hence he deprecates any comparison of the health 
of New York now, with what it was 60 years ago. According to 
this statement, the death-rate of New York will necessarily increase 
from year to year. A more monstrous proposition was never 
made, even by a New York official; and such a deliberately 
expressed opinion proves how utterly destitute of scientific infor- 
mation is the Health Department of New York. What are the 
facts ? 
"The death-rate of London, 200 years ago, was as 1 to 20 of its 
population ; this year, with a population more than four times as 
great, its death-rate is reduced more than one-half, being 1 in 46. 
"No rational person doubts that if New York had the same effi- 
cient, scientific health surveillance as London, her mortality 
returns would be regularly reduced from year to year, however 
her population increased, until they reached a standard not great- 
er than that city. Could our city even maintain its position, and 
not retrograde, it might be cause for gratulation, but it is fearful 
to contemplate the real import of this warning, that its death-rate 
is to increase with its growth. So late as 1854, London was more 
fatal to life than the country generally, but it has since been so 
improved that its mortality in the last of the three years has been 
"health of new YORK in 1860." No. 59.j 
31 
less than that of the country in the two previous years, being 
nearly level with the average of all England and Wales. 
"The mortality of Philadelphia for 1859 was one in sixty-four of 
its population, or but little more than half as great as New York. 
Had the health of New York for the past year been equal to the 
health of Philadelphia for the year preceding, 10,000 lives would 
have been saved I These fearful aggregates ought to startle even 
a City Inspector. 
" We have not space at this time to expose all'the fallacies and 
sophistries of this remarkable document. 
There is but one good purpose which it seems to us that it can 
serve, viz: to convince intelligent citizens of the absolute neces- 
sity of removing from responsible positions men who do not know, 
and cannot learn, the true nature of the duties which they are 
called upon to perform." [American Medical Times, January 
26th, 1861.] 
" HEALTH LAWS." 
"Will the Legislature provide a sanitary code for the city of 
New York ? Shall the great interests, and all claims of human 
life and health in this crowded centre of population and commerce, 
be longer neglected by our legislators? Who among those chosen 
representatives of the people are prepared to introduce, and prop- 
erly advocate a comprehensive and practical plan for promoting 
the public health ? It is to be hoped that among the hundred and 
sixty honorable gentlemen at Albany, there may be a goodly num- 
ber of the ablest and best members who will make sure work for 
the benefit of the people in this matter. 
In the city of New York and its suburbs, including Brooklyn, 
dwells more than one-fourth part of the total population of the 
State; and it is an acknowledged fact, that this million and 
a quarter of inhabitants is living under one of the most cor- 
rupt and corrupting municipal governments in the civilized 
world, and that reform without the interposition of State 
legislation is impracticable; of all the municipal departments 
of government, that having charge of health and cleanliness, is the 
most corrupt and reckless. It is called the Health Department, 
but that is a misnomer. It does little for health, but much for 
disease and death. Since 1844, there has been no medical adviser 
or executive medical officer in the department, and under existing 
laws, that entire department is inevitably devoted to plunder, and 
the neglect of every sanitary duty ; and were it not for the une- 
qualled salubrity of its location, New York would be so notoriously 
unhealthy, as very seriously to diminish its commercial prosperity. 
Even in the present years of health, this city has the highest 
death-rate of any maritine city in Christendom, and exhibits its 
degraded estimate of human life, by sacrificing annually to the 
Moloch of preventible disease, more than seven thousand lives 1 
Indeed, as estimated by the editor of the Daily Times, this criminal 32 
Assembly 
waste of human life annually amounts to more than nine thousand 
lives. 
The health bill of 1860 was defeated, but its principles were not 
lost, nor were the friends of reform disheartened at the defeat. 
To day they stand in the same uncompromising position in the 
defence and advocacy of sanitary reform, and a strictly medical 
policy in the administration of the department of public health in 
every city and town in the land. 
It is conceded that the city of New York must be provided with 
a Health Department, framed upon a medical and scientific basis, 
and that the uncontrollable influence of municipal corruption, 
patronage, and conflicting partisan interests, will render it utterly 
impossible to effect the necessary reforms without the interposition 
of the Legislature ; and further, it is the bounden duty of the 
State to provide the laws required for the protection of the life 
and health of the people. To the Legislature, therefore, we must 
continue to appeal on this subject." [American Medical Times, 
December 15th, 1860.J 
HEALTH OF NEW YORK AND LONDON. 
" It was just as well for the credit of our city Inspector that he 
had not (as he says) the "official data of the mortality of London 
for I860,' before he made out his report on the health of the city 
for the past year, as it must have modified very materially his 
statement that ' the difference >of mortality either way (between 
New York and London) cannot be very great.' For, while the 
mortality of New York shows an increase for the year of 1,065 
over 1859, in London, on the other hand, notwithstanding the far 
greater increase of population, there is the most remarkable abso- 
lute decrease. In each successive quarter of the year, the effect 
of the energetic measures of the medical officers of health has 
shown itself in a great diminution of the deaths. To mention only 
the last half of 1860: in the quarter ending September 29, the 
deaths were less by 3,094 in the corresponding period of the pre- 
vious year, while in the last quarter of the year they were less by 
1,109 than the corrected average mortality for a corresponding 
period during the ten previous years. 
This remarkable diminution, too, is attributable to no other cause 
than the scientific labors of the health officers; consequently, it is 
evident that 4,203 persons entered upon this happy new year in 
London who would have perished during the previous six months 
but for the adoption of those sanitary measures by which the 
causes of death were removed. 
The total deaths in New York for the year were 22,710- 
being in the enormous ratio of twenty-eight to every 1,000 of the 
population, while in London the ratio was only about twenty to 
the 1,000. These awful results in New York, on the other hand, 
can be attributed to no other cause than the total want of anything 
like sanitary science in our health department. The Inspector, it No. 59.] 
33 
is true, in his chronicle of the death-producing nuisances of the 
city, which he rehearses again this year in almost the same order 
and language that he did last year, complaining continually of his 
' lack of power to act' in regard to this, that, and the other nui- 
sance ; and in no one particular will he acknowledge that the 
shameful sanitary condition of the city is ' the fault of the under- 
signed.' Indeed, he seems to have power to act in regard to noth- 
ing, and it might be matter of wonderment how a bureau mana- 
ges to maintain such an extensive corps of employes, and dispose 
of the public revenue with such a small show both of powers and 
practical results. 
It is certainly ill becoming, also, in our Inspector to talk so 
sneeringly of the Sanitary Society, as ' so-called sanitarians,' while 
the health of London exhibits such a remarkable contrast to New 
York-attributed by the authorities, too, entirely to the recent 
applications of sanitary science. Mr. Delevan ought to have too 
much good sense, and too keen a regard for the welfare of that 
important branch of the public service committed to his charge, to 
be jealous of the labors of others in the same direction. He should 
court the aid of science and professional skill, instead of sneering 
at any well-meant efforts to promote the public health." [New 
York Daily Times, January 28th, 1861.J 
FOOD 
Is the material that builds up the human body, and repairs the 
waste occasioned by exercise. Man lives upon precisely the same 
elementary substances as does the vegetable ; and if he had simi- 
lar organs of digestion and assimilation, he might resort at once 
to the mine and the quarry, for the lime, iron, soda and potash, 
and to the atmosphere for the oxygen and nitrogen, of which his 
body is composed. 
But our Heavenly Father, who arrays the lillies of the valley 
more gorgeously than was Solomon in all his glory, has employed 
the whole vegetable kingdom, in the ceaseless labor of converting 
these inorganic substances which abound in the earth, and in the 
air, into those organized products, which constitute the food of 
man. 
But suppose these articles of food are imperfect and immature, 
and do not contain in the proportion which God ordained, those 
substances which are neccessary to health, strength and longevity. 
If lime is wanting, how will the 'bones and teeth be devel- 
oped and preserved ? If nitrogen is deficient, how will the 
muscles obtain their full strength and volume ? If sulphur 
and phosphorus are inadequately supplied, how will the nervous 
'Assembly No. 59. 34 
Assembly 
system, including the brain, perform its telegraphic communica- 
tions, and send along the electric wires, currents sufficiently pow- 
erful, to give eloquence to words and intensity to action? And if 
carbon is deficient, how will fat be obtained to cover and protect 
the nerves and muscles, and furnish fuel to heat up and move this 
human engine ? 
Will not the man who lives upon unwholesome food, upon arti- 
cles and animals that are poor, lean, shrunken, and withered, ine- 
vitably dwarf himself into a like littleness, and insignificance, and 
lose that beauty of form, vigor of body, and nobleness of charac- 
ter, which were stamped on man at the creation, to enable him to 
represent on earth his Divine Original? 
If man's life shall ever be extended beyond its present duration, 
if his power, physical or mental, shall ever be increased, one of 
the means by which such a result will be reached, will be by ren- 
dering more wholesome and more perfectly nutricious, those sub- 
stances which compose his daily food. 
The duty of preventing the introduction and sale of diseased 
meats, unripe and decaying fruits, and vegetables, impure milk, 
and other unwholesome substances used as food, is too great to be 
overlooked or neglected, by those whose official position renders 
them largely responsible for the sanitary condition of the district. 
Out of the vast quantity of unwholesome and diseased meats and 
fish exposed for sale in the city of New York, during the year 
1860, 120,180 pounds of meat, and 123,748 pounds of fish were in 
a condition to attract public attention, and were removed. That 
a still larger quantity in that incipient stage of decay which requir- 
ed finer tests to detect, was sold and eaten can hardly be doubted. 
The books are full of authorities, which space will not allow the 
committee to quote, showing that impure diet produces some of 
the most serious forms of sickness, and aggravates every disease 
to which the human constitution is subjected. 
The committee cannot close this report without expressing the 
high appreciation in which it holds the labors of the 
NEW YORK SANITARY ASSOCIATION. 
This is a voluntary association of philanthropic individuals 
from "the professions of medicine, law, public instruction, and 
divinity, and from all the callings of commercial and industrial 
life," called together by the wail of human sorrow which comes 
up from thoce dark abodes of sickness and disease, which the No. 59.] 
35 
public authorities suffer to exist as breeding places for pestilence 
and death. 
To these men are due those investigations into the sanitary 
condition of the city, which have startled and instructed the pub- 
lic mind on this subject. To these men are due the initiation of 
those reformatory measures upon the success of which the re- 
moval of this excessive death-pressure depends; and it is to these 
men that the city and the State look for those persistent efforts 
which will result in putting disease, in its most defiant forms, in 
subjection to human authority. But the hands of these men must 
be strengthened, their efforts seconded. Benevolence and charity, 
of which the world sees so little, must not fail in their heavenly 
mission, for want of the necessary support. 
All classes and professions of men are interested in the 
condition of the public health of the city and State, and they 
should all use their personal efforts and influence to place it in 
the most favorable conditions which a strict observance of the 
laws of life will permit. 
But upon no class of citizens does the duty of helping on the 
work which the Sanitary Association of New York has commenced, 
press with more force than upon members of the 
LEGAL PROFESSION J 
because the clear perception, the calm thought, and the nice dis- 
crimination, which enables the bench to make decisions in accord- 
ance with those principles of jurisprudence which the great ex- 
pounders of the law have established, and the enunciation by the 
bar of those sublime truths and brilliant illustrations which 
carry conviction to the minds of jurors, and compel courts to do 
justice, are dependent upon the healthy action of the brain and 
nervous system. Genius and learning are as powerless in the 
stifling air of the close and crowded court room, as the veriest 
blockhead would be. Indeed, the advantage may be on the side 
of ignorance and stupidity, for the quick workings of a powerful 
brain soonest uses up the vitalizing fluid. In the intellectual con- 
flicts of legal men, the brain requires rapid supplies of highly 
oxygenated blood, in order to sustain the prolonged attack, and 
make the brilliant defence which crowns with honorable fame the 
successful combatant. 
For want of that healthful exhilaration which is furnished by 
pure air and unobstructed sunlight, artificial stimulants and nar- 
cotic drugs, are resorted to to supply the pressing exigencies of Assembly 
36 
the moment, until finally the whole nervous system is raised to an 
unnatural exaltation, when on some momentous occasion, and in 
the very hour of triumph, paralysis strikes down its victim, and 
adds another name to the brilliant list of those that have sunk 
under the effects of excessive labor, performed in an atmos- 
phere loaded with the elements of disease and death. 
The following table shows the alarming increase of deaths from 
derangement of the nervous and arterial system, which we may 
assume to be mainly owing to. a want of pure air and the absence 
of sunlight, while engaged in labors which draw largely upon the 
mental forces. 
Table. 
Whole number of deaths in New York city from congestion of 
brain : 
From 1804 to 1819, inclusive, 15 years none 
1820 to 1838, do 18* do 50 
1839 to 1852, do 14 do 417 
1853 to 1855, do 3 do 1,576 
The deaths from apoplexy, from 1804 to 1810, were one in 
3,428 ; from 1811 to 1820, one in 2,140 ; from 1821 to 1830, one in 
2,274; from 1831 to 1840, one in 2,455 ; from 1841 to 1850, one 
in 1,192; from 1851 to 1857, one in 1,739. | Testimony of J. H. 
Griscom, M. D.J 
Court and jury rooms should be models of neatness, comfort and 
convenience, and be filled with the inflowing of the blessed sun- 
light. The first idea of justice is purity-purity in the ermine, 
purity in all its adjuncts and surroundings. The want of conve- 
nient and healthful accommodations for the holdings of courts, 
has driven men from the bench whom the city cannot afford to lose. 
In the following letter of resignation of Judge Pierrepont, this 
subject is presented in a manner that should arrest attention: 
Rooms of the Superior Court, ? 
City of New York, Oct. 9, 1860. j 
To His Excellency, Edwin D. Morgan, 
Governor of the State of New York : 
I resign the office of Justice of the Superior Court of the City 
of New York, to which I was, three years ago, elected. 
At the time of my election it was fully understood that a Court 
House was speedily to be erected. The Bar held a meeting and 
passed resolutions, which were sent to the Board of Supervisors, 
who appointed a committee to examine into the subject. After 
full investigation it was then ascertained, and published in the 
newspapers of the day, that " the rooms of the Superior Court No. 59. 
37 
" were utterly unfit for the transaction of its business ; ruinous to 
"the health and dangerous to the lives of those who were obliged 
"to attend within them." Since then three years have passed, 
and yet not a stone is laid for a new Court House ; meanwhile the 
proofs have sadly accumulated, that the rooms of this Court are 
indeed "ruinous to health and dangerous to life." 
The Legislature undertook to remedy the evil by creating a 
Building Commission. The Mayor nominated Commissioners, and 
the Board of Supervisors would not confirm them. The Super- 
visors then took the matter in hand and were desirous to erect a 
building without delay; but they soon found out that they had 
no power to take the land of the Park for any purpose. In short, 
it has been discovered, after three years of trial, that no man or 
body of men in this municipal government have any power to do 
any substantial thing except to stay the action of every other man 
or body of men. The machinery of the city government is so 
cunningly devised that each wheel can stop the motion of every 
other, and so that the whole shall by no possibility move in har- 
mony together. No man is held responsible for anything, and no 
one appears to have the power to do anything but mischief. 
The freedom of vacation has restored me to the full vigor of 
perfect health, and I am not willing to imperil it again by daily 
confinement in poisoned air ; and since there seems to be no power 
in the present oity authorities to erect a court house, and as no 
judge can perform the duties which belong to the office with dhe 
present accommodations, I leave the bench and return to the prac- 
tice of the law, 
And, very respectfully remain, your ever obedient, 
EDWARDS PIERREPONT. 
The foregoing letter is full of instruction; but the judge's expe- 
rience, as narrated to his intimate friends, is still more valuable. 
He declares that the proper administration of justice in the court 
rooms of New York, is both physically and morally impossible, in 
consequence of theutter disregard of sanitary regulations in those rooms. 
He says that no jury can, in a protracted trial, have the physi- 
cal and mental ability to follow and properly weigh the testimony 
of witnesses; nor can judges and attorneys properly discharge 
their duties, so utterly contaminated does the atmosphere of those 
rooms become after a few hours. He has related cases of syncope, 
sickness, and death, among jurors, while, as he asserts, the re- 
maining jurors were by the same causes rendered really incompe- 
tent to discharge their duties. 
Judge Pierrepont is a young, athletic and healthy man, and 
being aware of the inestimable value of health, he resigned 
simply to save himself from causes of physical disorder that he 
could not otherwise control. 38 
Assembly 
It is the especial duty of men engaged in 
TRADE AND COMMERCE 
to sustain those measures that look to the improvement and pre- 
servation of the public health. The annual loss to business men 
by this excessive sickness and mortality, is more than sufficient 
to defray the expense of completing the sanitary defences of the 
city, while a single epidemic sweeps away the profits of a whole 
year. 
"An epidemic of yellow fever in this city is equal to the des- 
truction of two-thirds of our mercantile community ; there is no 
doubt about it; but it is difficult to make the mercantile part of 
our community realize this, and they never will until they are 
ruined by a visitation of this pestilential disease." [Dr. James 
R. Wood.*] 
Like a faithful sentinel upon the ramparts of a beleagured 
city, has raised the cry of danger, and bid the garrison stand to 
its defences. Let it continue to sound the alarm, and bring its 
rifled cannon to bear upon the allied armies of ignorance, cupidity 
and corruption. Let it place before the people the astounding 
fact that, of the 22,000 persons who die annually in the city of 
New York, 8,000 (more than one-third of all the annual deaths in 
the city,) might, and would under proper sanitary regulations, 
be saved. 8,000 persons whom the destroying angel would have 
passed over, if their lintels and door posts had exhibited the 
signs of purification and atonement! Let it place before the 
people the fact that 200,000 other persons are needlessly sub- 
jected to pain, sickness, suffering, and want, in consequence of 
those unfavorable conditions, which vigilant sanitary supervision 
would prevent. Let it echo the cry of suffering humanity that 
comes up from the 25,000 persons who live and die in cellars and 
basements, deprived of the light and air which God has provided 
for all his children. 
THE PRESS, 
THE PULPIT 
Should lend its powerful aid to help on this work of sanitary- 
reform. It is a part of the vineyard which calls for their especial 
labor and care; for here spring up and flourish the rank and poi- 
sonous weeds which "choke out the Word." 
Let a portion of the 30,000 sermons which are annually preach- 
ed in the city of New York, be devoted to the instruction of the 
people on this subject. Let the clergy educate and bring up an 
invincible corps of men and women to support the philanthropic No. 59. 
39 
individuals who are leading on this vast reformatory movement, 
and insure its complete success. Unsupported by an enlightened 
public sentiment, which the pulpit can do so much to create, 
the attempt will assuredly fail. 
The adventurous knight, who hews his way deep into opposing 
ranks, throws his life away, unless columns of trained warriors 
press into the crimson path, and assist to roll on the tide of vic- 
tory. So the leaders of mankind in the great battle of life, though 
they prove themselves prodigies of intellectual valor, and with the 
spear of Ithuriel, cleave a glittering pathway far into the embat- 
tled hosts of ignorance and error, yet unless followed up by intel- 
ligent and discerning men, who are ready to defend and maintain 
the truth, these pioneers and champions of the race, will go down 
in the strife, while hostile ranks close up and conceal the places 
where they fall. We may hope indeed, that when the evils which 
afflict humanity shall have been beaten back by the resistless 
march of science and the arts, the ashes of these great reformers 
will be gathered up, and preserved in sacred mausoleums, and the 
world perform an annual pilgrimage to their shrines. 
When the city of Edinburgh was stricken with pestilence, and 
the pale horse and his rider went up and down the streets, sum- 
moning its people to "the silent halls of death," some pious men, 
humbled by this exhibition of divine displeasure, sent a deputa- 
tion to Lord Brougham, desiring him to appoint a day of fasting, 
humiliation and prayer, in order that the hand of the Lord might 
be removed and the plague stayed. Brougham, without discuss- 
ing the efficacy of prayer, advised the deputation to go home, 
cleanse the city of its impurities, perform the necessary acts of 
fumigation and ablution, let light and air into the dwellings, 
courts, alleys and streets, and await the result. 
The advice was taken-the result auspicious ; the sound of 
weeping and lamentation was hushed, and, amid the songs of 
rejoicing humanity, the fast was postponed. 
Let the pious men of New York, while they fail not to seek by 
prayer and supplication divine guidance and mercy, use their 
efforts to have the city cleansed, dwellings purified, and sanitary 
regulations enforced. 
While they send men to heathen lands to set up finger boards 
pointing the way to heaven, let them erect barricades across the 
broad road their neighbors travel, and stop the thousands of their 
fellow citizens who are rushing to perdition therein. Let them 40 
Assembly 
remove some of the causes which make their own city the favorite 
haunts of wickedness and crime, of sickness, disease and death- 
then they may with more propriety and greater effect 
" Push on the rolling car 
That carries light and comfort 
To Boris BoolaGha!" 
The committee has been deeply impressed by the results of its 
investigations into the causes which make the largest city in the 
United States, and soon to be the commercial emporium of the 
world, the most destructive to human life of any city on the globe ; 
and when it stands confessed that much of this astounding amount 
of sickness, suffering and death may be prevented by proper sani- 
tary regulations, and a competent Board of Health, it cannot as 
citizens and legislators, refuse to second the appeal which comes 
up from the imperial city for the relief which the Metropolitan 
Health Bill is intended to provide. 
The State through its Legislature, will be held responsible for 
the condition of the public health of New York, and for its annual 
unnecessary loss of eight thousand lives, unless it shall have pro- 
vided all the means which medical science, and enlightened public 
sentiment have declared to be necessary, to arrest disease and 
maintain the conditions upon which health depends. 
When the -Legislature of the State of New York shall pass the 
bill herewith introduced, and the Board of Health thereby created 
shall use discreetly the power it confers, and faithfully discharge 
the duties it imposes, when regard for health shall exceed the desire 
for gain, and the cry of humanity be heard above the calls of party, 
then the sanitary condition of the city and State will be improved- 
disease will be diminished, sickness lessened, suffering relieved, 
and death shorn of its terrors ; then will be exhibited the evi- 
dence of that hope which looks forward to man's triumphant 
possession of his earthly inheritance, for then the springs of human 
life will be restored to their original elasticity and vigor, and the 
whole machinery of man perform with harmonious and undeviating 
regularity, the labor imposed upon it by its Almighty Builder. 
HENRY A. PRENDERGAST. 
L. CHANDLER BALL. 
WILKES ANGEL. 
H. N. SHERWOOD.