and much among adults. Police records show that most of the unpremeditated brutal murders are committed by persons under the influence of alcoholic drinks, and from general statistics we gather that a very large per cent. of all the heinous crimes is attributed to the effects of vile liquors. Moreover, physicians of large experience assert that the want of success in the treatment, and, at times, even fatal results in cases of sickness, is due to the inertness, substitution, or adulteration of the medicines dispensed.

To the drinking of infected milk or polluted water epidemics of Asiatic cholera, typhoid fever and other dangerous diseases have been often traced. So marked have been the good effects of preventive measures against these dangers wherever they have been instituted, that progressive cities throughout the civilized world are now enforcing them; and many of the large centres of population have built extensive laboratories, where chemists and bacteriologists are employed testing and analyzing specimens of food and samples of water brought by citizens, physicians, or by inspecting officers. And others are occupied in preparing vaccins and antitoxins against or to antagonize dangerous diseases more or less due to such impurities.

These measures, however, involve too great an expenditure of money for them to be available to small cities and towns. Nevertheless, there are now in almost all parts of this country manufacturing chemists and biologists who possess facilities for making the most intricate analyses, accessible in emergencies, and prepared to furnish vaccins and antitoxins for the protection of the public health.

The need of this kind of protection being as urgent in the small as in the large centres of population, it becomes the duty of all civic authorities to provide food inspection, as well as other safeguards, to the people they have sworn to protect. It is well known that places not so protected become dumping-grounds where producers, jobbers and speculators get rid of articles they cannot sell in the open market. Dealers eagerly buy this class of goods, because the profits are enormous.

The most effective way of stopping the sale of any article of merchandise is to make such sale unprofitable to the dealer. To accomplish this, ordinances should be passed making it a misdemeanor for any person to keep, sell, or offer for sale, unwholesome food or food products; adulterated, drugged or made-up wines, liquors, spirits, beers and vinegars; any watered, mixed milk, or milk known to have been exposed to contaminating conditions;

inert, diluted or adulterated medicines; and ordinances to appoint officers to inspect places where these articles are kept for sale, to take sample for inspection or analysis, and with power to condemn, confiscate or destroy any article found to be dangerous to health or life to indict and prosecute all persons violating any of the food ordinances.

Almost every village of any push nowadays has a health officer, who is expected to remove the causes of disease and promote works calculated to improve health and lengthen the lives of those he serves. But most generally the duties of that officer are restricted to hunting cases of smallpox and other contagious diseases, fumigation of premises, destruction of bedding, clothing, etc., and to compiling of mortality statistics. He has no power to act whatever; is poorly paid, and liable to be ousted with every change of administration. Under such conditions, how can sanitary laws be properly enforced? Here the health officer is a mere puppet in the hands of a board, sometimes called board of health, selected, not because of his knowledge of sanitation, but as a reward for political services, etc. The instinct of self-preservation, coupled with common sense, would, it seems, urge the people to insist on having an office, so important to the welfare of the entire community, filled by one whose moral integrity and firmness have been fully tested, one who has had some experience, and possesses an aptitude for that class of work. This office should be made permanent, and the occupant required to give the whole of his time to the duties of the office. He should give sufficient bonds to protect the corporation against losses due to neglect or otherwise; the salary paid him should be sufficient to make him independent, and enable him to execute his work without fear or favor.

ORDINANCE DEFINING THE DUTIES OF FOOD INSPECTOR AND ASSISTANTS.

In addition to the other duties of a health officer, he should also superintend the work attendant upon food inspection. He should be required to enforce all the health laws and ordinances, select his subordinates, and assume the responsibility for their behavior and their work.

The health officer and his sworn inspectors shall have the power and are required to enter and examine every place, within the corporate limits, where food or food products of any kind are kept for sale; to condemn or confiscate any article of food which they consider to be unwholesome; if ill-smelling or dangerous to public

health they shall have it carted away at once and destroyed or buried. They shall carefully examine animals intended to be used for food, whether in transit, in stables or yards; if they are diseased they shall condemn them and send them off for treatment; if incurable they shall be killed and burned or buried at a safe distance outside of the corporate limits. It will be the duty of these officers to enter every grocery store, every market, green groceries and places where fish, meats, vegetables or fruit are kept for sale, every fruit and candy store, every restaurant or places where food is prepared or cooked, all the bakeries, cake shops, bar-rooms and places where wine, liquors, spirits, beer, vinegar or other articles used for drinks are made, kept or sold; all dairies, milk wagons and places where milk and milk products are kept or sold; all drug-stores and places where medicines are mixed, manufactured or sold; to take samples of any or every article found therein, giving his receipt therefor. The health officer shall carefully examine every sample brought to him by any citizen or inspector. If there exist any evidence of fraud or adulteration he shall at once test or analyze said sample, or cause it to be analyzed, by some competent and reliable chemist selected for the purpose by the authorities. From him he shall secure a certified copy of the analysis of each sample. When this analysis shows that the article has been fraudulently tampered with or adulterated, it shall be his imperative duty to at once confiscate said article, to indict and prosecute the person who furnished the sample; to bring said article with the analysis, and give his own and his inspector's evidence before the court, that all guilty parties may be dealt with in accordance with the provisions of the ordinances.

ORDINANCE DEFINING OFFENSES WHICH SHALL BE PUNISHED BY FINES AND IMPRISONMENT.

Any person keeping, selling, or offering for sale, any article of food or any product used for food, which is unwholesome, has been fraudulently tampered with, or adulterated, any liquid used for drinks that has been adulterated or substituted; any medicine that is inert, that has been substituted or adulterated; any milk known to be infected with the germs of disease or has been tampered with; any animal intended for food, if unsound or diseased, shall surrender any such article to the health officer or his deputies on demand. He shall be indicted and tried in a court having jurisdiction; if found guilty, he shall be fined one hundred dollars for the first offense and held in prison until this fine is paid. Should

the same person be convicted a second time, the fine shall be five hundred dollars, six months' imprisonment, and his or her license revoked.

In case any reputable citizen or official enters a complaint against the health officer or any of his inspectors, such complaint shall be fully and publicly investigated by the mayor and administrative board; if this officer or inspector is found guilty of fraud, of malfeasance or neglect, it will be the board's bounden duty to prosecute said officer, who shall, if convicted of neglect, pay a fine of one hundred dollars for the first offence; but when found guilty a second time, or the offence is malfeasance, the fine shall be five hundred dollars, with imprisonment until said fine is paid, and he shall be permanently dismissed from office.

There are ordinances upon the books of almost every corporate town and village against the sale of unwholesome food and adulterated drinks, but they are not enforced. Unscrupulous dealers taking advantage of the situation, sell to the unsuspecting or benign inhabitants second-hand and worthless goods: meat so spoiled that it is fit for a carrion only, wilted and fermenting vegetables, soft or partly decayed fruit, stale or mixed milk, when they should have been protected by those in authority. But when these people shall once understand that the health officer is responsible and can be prosecuted for neglect or malfeasance, it is likely that they will protect themselves, and more likely still that the health officer and his deputies will enforce the ordinances to the letter. In all matters where health and life is concerned, politics, and as far as possible, theory, should be turned out, and common sense and justice invited in!

MOSQUITOES AND YELLOW FEVER.

The mosquito theory, lately foisted in on our people as was the house fly years ago, instead of being a step in the right direction, simply tends to divert the mind from what has already been done to rid this continent of yellow fever, once a very formidable Scourge. Such theory cannot change the nature or habits of that disease. It will neither prevent its recurrence nor diminish its fatality. As of yore it will recur in the epidemic form, starting in the hottest part of summer in some of the undrained and filthy localities within the yellow fever zone, and spread wherever the conditions for its propagation are favorable, in spite of the most rigid measures or best laid plans to "jugulate" it or to check its progress: fire, smoke, electricity, the booming of cannons (concussion), segregation, freezing, slaughtering the mosquitoes or house flies,

and what not, have all been tried ad nauseam from its first appearance in Boston (1696), repeated at the recurrence of every epidemic, to this very day, at Laredo. These experiments always failed, because yellow fever is a self-limited disease, which spreads for about ninety days, then gradually dies out, freeze or no freeze. Yellow fever was more frequent and virulent in Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc., at one period, than it is now in any of the Southern States. The mosquito, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thrust its venomous proboscis into the skin of the inhabitants when those cities were subject to yellow fever epidemics, still performs the same office and calls forth the same forcible expressions, but 'Yellow Jack" has left them many, many years ago!

The moment sanitation stepped in, and the people of large cities were given more space to breathe in, pure air, the filth removed, the streams purified and the wet lands drained, the ravages of yellow fever and of Asiatic cholera soon were things of the past.

To that great conflagration which destroyed a large portion of London (1665), soon after the loss of a great many of her inhabitants by the plague, the world owes the benefits of sanitary measures. In rebuilding the burned district, the streets were made wider, the yards more spacious, rooms better lighted and aired, sewers built, and the streets and yards kept cleaner. These changes were at once followed by an improvement in the health of the inhabitants and diminution of the death rate. The plague never returned. Cities on the continent, profiting by this example, got rid of the dread ogres one after the other.

After sustaining great losses by successive epidemics of yellow fever, the returns of which strict quarantine regulations had failed to prevent, the inhabitants of Boston decided on cleaning their town, and to transform the marshy lands surrounding them into truck gardens and productive orchards. Starting this good work in 1700, they witnessed the last attempt at an outbreak of the fever (a few cases) in 1805.

Baltimore was one of the first to follow her example and to get rid of yellow fever and of her rigid quarantine in 1818; New York followed, in 1822. Philadelphia, 1853. Norfolk planted strawberries on her drained marshy lands, using the city's filth as fer- · tilizer, thus solving this problem, in 1855.

Charleston, S. C., which had suffered longer, more frequently, and sustained greater losses than any other city upon the South Atlantic coast, finally, after the epidemic of 1868, decided to give