The health campaigns of the last forty-five years divide themselves
naturally into two groups, those that came before 1900 and those that
came after that year. The early campaigns were the more obvious; the
later campaigns are the more subtle in their tactics, but none the
less effective. Before 1900 the death-rate had been reduced by more
than one third. In 1866 it was 34 per thousand; in 1900 it was 20.57
per thousand. During this period of thirty-four years wells had been
gradually eliminated as sources of drinking-water, until not one was
left in the principal parts of the city. Young children who never had
been in the country were brought to the well in Central Park and they
gazed into it as a curiosity, just as they looked at the bears and
the greenhouses. At the same time the general water-supply was vastly
improved. To live in cellars was made illegal, and there was a general
improvement in the condition of dwellings. Street-cleaning became well
organized; sewers were laid in almost all the streets, and refuse was
cared for scientifically. The public supervision of contagious diseases
became effective; good use was made of new medical discoveries, such as
diphtheria antitoxin, and the public hospitals were improved.
Yet the advances in sanitary safeguarding since 1900 are more wonderful
than those that came before. In the last twelve years the death-rate
has been reduced by a quarter from its comparatively high rate at the
beginning of the century. In 1911 it was 15.13 per thousand. For 1912
it was 14.11 per thousand. However, this reduction of more than six per
thousand has been won with over twice the effort that was necessary to
make the first fourteen per thousand. The city budget for 1912 carried
an appropriation for the Department of Health of more than $3,000,000.
As much more was spent the same year by the seventy-odd organizations,
private or semi-public, the purpose of which is the betterment of
health conditions. Besides, there has been the devoted labor of more
than seven thousand physicians.
In all this vast field of effort, as diversified as the entire scope
of modern science, as complex as civilization itself, two main lines
stand out conspicuously. New York was a pioneer among cities in both.
These concerned the treatment of tuberculosis and children’s diseases.
The organized fight against tuberculosis in New York, under the
latest approved scientific methods, dates only from 1904. Before that
time there was no successful effort on the part of the authorities
to diagnose the disease properly, nor any attempt to deal with it
intelligently when it was discovered accidentally. Yet New York is
as great a sufferer from the white plague as any other locality.
Its congested living, its large Negro population, and its indigent
foreigners, ignorant of our language and customs, make it a fertile
breeding-ground for the tubercle bacillus.
Within eight years, twenty-nine tuberculosis clinics have been
established, and several day camps have been built where sufferers
can recuperate without expense and without leaving the city. In all
these thorough blood and sputum tests are made with modern scientific
apparatus. At the same time, it has been widely made known that to
recover from the dread disease it is not necessary to leave the city,
which, situated between two bodies of water, is swept constantly by
fresh air, the chief necessity in the treatment of tuberculosis.