discovering many other species of bacteria that are helpful to man. Our
polluted waters could not be purified, our air could not be cleared
from foul odors, nor the proper decomposition of organic matters go
on, without the aid of bacteria. These little vegetable growths, while
working much harm upon humanity, contribute far more to their comfort,
well-being, and happiness than they do to their ill. Possibly no
better illustrations can be given of the value of bacteriology to
sanitary science, and the great progress it has brought about, than
to contrast a cholera outbreak of a few years ago with one occurring
more recently; or to point to the efficacy of purifying water by the
assistance of bacteria. Another disease, pulmonary consumption, may
also be noticed, but the triumph here is not so marked as yet.
The first outbreak of cholera in the United States occurred in 1832.
In one special hospital in New York city, 2030 patients were received
in the nine weeks from July 1 to September 1, and of these 850 died.
An eye-witness, who was personally known to the writer, one not given
to exaggeration, said that the state of dread and alarm had been
increasing until, when the disease first made its appearance in New
York, fully one half of the population had left the city, many of
the physicians fleeing with the rest. There was no efficient health
department, and no organized system for the protection of the public
health. This gentleman was a city missionary, and, in the performance
of his duties, visited many of the houses. He mentioned visiting one
of these on a morning when the fifteenth body had been carried out.
It was the time of the rumble of the dead cart and the indiscriminate
burial in public trenches. Contrast the horrors of this scene with the
last attempt of cholera to invade the United States, in 1893, when,
notwithstanding its presence at the quarantine station in New York
harbor, and the actual presence of a few well-authenticated cases in
the city itself, _not one of these cases proved a focus for the spread
of the disease_.
The opinion that water in some way acts as a conveyer of disease can
be generalized after a very little observation. To explain how it does
this is a problem that was attempted to be solved by the chemist. He
added vastly to our knowledge, but it was not until the biologist
showed the presence of the disease-producing bacteria in water that
a full explanation was possible. But the biologist has done more: it
has been found, and notably in the very complete series of experiments
carried on by the Massachusetts Board of Health, that even an effluent
of a sewer, if filtered through a bed of sand, is purified to such
an extent that the filtrate is a perfectly safe water to drink. The
dangerous organic matter disappears, and ninety-eight per cent of the
bacteria is removed. And it is pleasing to note, when one has so much
to say of the dangers of bacteria, that the purification is entirely
brought about by the action of bacteria working for the good of man.
A sand filter bed does not purify water properly until it has been
in operation for a few days, when the top of the bed is covered with
a slime in which the bacteria act upon the organic matter in the
water and purify it. The fact of the purification was known before
the manner in which it was done was understood; and in those cities
where the authorities have acted upon this knowledge and have purified
their water supply, the influence upon the death-rate of typhoid fever
is almost as marked as those already quoted for typhus fever, while
the scourge of cholera has been almost entirely removed from their
borders, as many an instance during the late outbreak in Europe could
illustrate. It does not contribute to our self-esteem to know that most
of the water supplies so filtered are to be found abroad. There is not
enough of “practical politics” in filter beds to charm the traditional
alderman of our cities.
It is now clearly proven that a species of bacteria is uniformly
present in pulmonary consumption. This bacillus is to be found in
the material coughed up by those who are ill with that disease. It
has considerable tenacity of life; the expectorated material can be
dried, pulverized into dust, and carried about on the wind; should the
bacteria so dried and carried find a proper soil, they can grow and
reproduce the disease. Fortunately, a combination of circumstances
is required for the contraction of this disease, or it would be far
more prevalent than it is. Notwithstanding, it already claims more
victims than any other single disease. What has sanitary science done
for its repression? It is attempting, in a tentative way, to obtain
a registration of those who are consumptives, in order to teach
them to avoid being possible sources of infection; to disinfect the
discharges carrying the bacteria, and at times the rooms occupied by
the consumptives. In Rome, for example, the services of the public
disinfectors are asked for as eagerly for the room occupied by a
consumptive as for one that had been used by a person suffering from
diphtheria. In New York city, where the department of health has been
exercising an oversight and care over the consumptives, there has been
a constantly diminishing death-rate from all tubercular diseases from
1886, when the rate was 4.42, to 1897, when it was 2.85, with the
single exception of 1894, which was lower than 1895. It is too soon to
predict the result, but the proper care of consumptives promises much
to check the ravages of the disease.
[Illustration: SAND FILTER BED.]
One of the charms connected with the great results indicated is the
simplicity of the methods employed to bring them about. While complex
schemes and elaborate machinery may be necessary whenever the amount
of service to be rendered requires organization and division of labor
to properly accomplish the desired results, the principles are such
that they can be executed in the smallest hamlet, and with the very
crudest paraphernalia. The two great weapons of the sanitarian in
fighting disease are isolation and disinfection. Dr. Henry M. Baker,
the efficient secretary of the State Board of Health of Michigan,
has for years collected and tabulated the results of the observing
and non-observing of these precautions in his State. He has a happy
faculty for graphically presenting the results. One of his diagrams is
presented here and needs no explanation. In very few of these outbreaks
could there have been any municipal disinfecting plant or isolating
hospital.
Isolation and disinfection—but the old quarantine and fumigation under
new names! Who of us has not sympathized with the traveler of the
earlier days in the Levant, when he was condemned to days and weeks of
detention in the barren lazaretto? And even at so comparatively recent
a date as the pilgrimage recorded by Mark Twain in his “Innocents
Abroad,” he states that the Italians found it more to their convenience
to fumigate travelers than to wash themselves. How very different is a
modern quarantine station, such as may be found near any of our more
important ports on the Atlantic coast. If the health officer of the
port finds a contagious disease upon board, he immediately removes the
sick to the hospital, and keeps the well under supervision long enough
to see if the disease has been communicated to any. He may keep them on
shipboard; but more likely, if the ship must be disinfected, he removes
them to the detention station, safely separated from the hospital. The
steerage has been crowded, and there is need of disinfection of their
persons and clothing. Under proper supervision, each is required to
take a bath, for which abundant facilities are furnished; and while
this is doing their clothing has been placed in the steam disinfecting
apparatus, a partial vacuum secured, superheated steam introduced,
the clothing thoroughly disinfected, a partial vacuum again produced,
whereby the contents are rapidly dried, and they are ready to be put
on again by the time the bath is completed. The luggage is treated
in the same way, while the cargo is probably treated to a sulphur
fumigation,—the sulphur being burned in furnaces and the fumes carried
to all parts of the cargo through lines of hose. In the course of a
very few days, at least, all but the sick can proceed on their journey
without any risk of conveying the disease.
Everything that has thus far been chronicled regarding the progress
of sanitary science has related to the diminution of the death-rate
and the prevention of disease. After all, is this worthy the telling?
When one learns “how the other half lives,” or, with more restricted
knowledge, realizes to a degree the intensity of the remark of a young
Hebrew, replying to a command of a police officer to clean up, as
related in “The Workers” by Professor Wykoff: “You tell us we’ve got
to keep clean,” he answered in broken English, lifting his voice to a
shout above the clatter of machines; “what time have we to keep clean,
when it’s all we can do to get bread? Don’t talk to us about disease;
it’s _bread_ we’re after, _bread_!”
Is it worthy of boasting that sanitary science is only increasing
the hardships and adding to the number of mouths to be fed, without
opening up new ways to earn one’s bread? Even if it be so decided, and
all the claims of progress thus far made be declared wanting, there
still remains much worthy of praise. Sanitary science strives not only
to prevent disease, but also to promote health, and its progress is
fully as marked in its efforts at promotion as in those of prevention,
although we do not possess the cold figures of even imperfect vital
statistics to demonstrate the proposition.
It must be kept in mind that sanitary science is wider than sanitation
in its technical sense. One would not care to assert that philanthropic
effort and sweet charity are resultants of the development of sanitary
science,—very few care to assert an evident untruth. But the influence
of this study has been widespread and beneficial. The whole round of
social science is also permeated with the truths demonstrated by the
sanitarian, and is likewise deeply indebted to its teachings. Our field
broadens greatly as we view it, just as one who has been traveling
through a vale of surpassing grandeur, because of the mountain barriers
on either side, finds himself confronted by a park whose beauty is
enhanced by its variety as well as its extent, bounded, it is true, by
the same mountains, but merely a hazy definition of the distant horizon.
In the construction of dwellings, for example, the small, low ceiled
rooms, whose earthen or stone floors were covered with rushes seldom
removed, the absorbers of whatever might fall upon the floor; the
unpaved, unswept, and unsewered street; the domestic water supply but a
well into which filters the water from the adjoining cesspool,—these
and many similar destroyers of health and comfort can no longer be
found among nations classed as enlightened in our school geographies.
Even the improvements of half a century ago—the tenements improvised
out of the deserted mansions of the well-to-do, with the additions
built on the rear of the lot to increase the density of the
population and the rent of the owner (as well as the death-rate),
are disappearing, and in their places we find dwellings capable of
furnishing air and light to all of the residents.
[Illustration: A QUARANTINE STATION.]
Then, in the matter of streets, how much more attention is now given to
small parks! When about the middle of the century interest in public
parks was revived, the efforts of the various cities were directed to
the securing of large tracts of ground and beautifying them in every
way. They were open to every one, it is true, but too often too far
removed to be of use to the submerging tenth. Now, while not adorning
these with one garland less, the effort is making to break up the
congestion of the crowded districts by breathing spaces, to the comfort
and vigor of those who must make the surrounding houses their homes.
The streets, too, no longer paved with the unsightly cobble-stones,
are made noiseless with the asphalt paving and, what is more to the
purpose, can be easily cleansed by flushing. When practical business,
and not practical politics, prevails in the municipality, there is no
opportunity for the household refuse to accumulate, although no longer
rushes are available to receive it, for it is regularly and promptly
removed.
The exigencies of trade compelled our government to establish its
bureau for the inspection of meat. The necessity of an inspection of
foodstuffs for export demonstrates the possibility of adulteration for
the home market. While, possibly, the ingenuity of the sophisticator
has more than kept pace with the keenness of the inspector, the health
of the people has been maintained, their comfort promoted, and their
resources husbanded by the inspections carried on by the various city
and state boards of health.
The welfare of the people at home, in their dwellings and at their
tables, does not limit the efforts of the sanitarian. He takes
cognizance of the daily toil, the ceaseless grind, to win one’s daily
bread. He recognizes that some callings are dangerous or annoying to
the people, and devises methods to overcome this, or failing in this,
insists that such occupations must be carried on remote from the
dwelling-place of man. Others, he finds, bring danger to those who are
employed. This may not be an inherent danger, but one acquired by our
crowding of operatives, or in other ways not securing to them proper
comfort; and factory inspectors are at work to reduce these dangers to
a minimum, and to prevent child labor as well—giving to youth, as far
as cessation from overmuch toil can give, an opportunity to develop
into physical manhood or womanhood. The sanitarian insists upon proper
ventilation in mines, and tries to devise the means to remove the
danger from those trades that ordinarily are inherently dangerous.
The sanitarian seeks to aid in the amenities and relaxations of life
as well. The playgrounds for children, the athletic grounds by the
riverside at Boston, recreation piers in New York, are examples of
this. And all of these are comparatively recent efforts, adding to the
catalogue of achievements during the century. It was the arch-enemy
who, in the poem of antiquity, said: “All that a man hath will he give
for his life.” But he made the remark after much observation, and to
Jehovah, unto whom even he would not dare to lie; and the rolling years
since the Hebrew epic was first written have only added testimony
to the truth of the assertion. In these later days, when the rule
and plummet are everywhere applied, where the scientist delves and
classifies to seek the cosmos in the apparent chaos, there was evolved
out of self-seeking for life a higher and better quest,—a search
for those things which make for the health of all. This search has
widened, until many a broad savannah has been trodden, many a mountain
scaled and wilderness explored. With its ever extending view, new
responsibilities and greater cares have been thrust upon those who are
endeavoring to rule in this domain. A community, a nation, is but a
unit. Let one part suffer, and all are in pain; let one but decay, and
rot is imminent everywhere. There can be no true social progress, no
real stability of government, no national prosperity worthy the name,
unless the environment of each individual permits the enjoyment of
personal health, if he individually observes but the ordinary care of
self. And whatever else of progress for sanitary science may be granted
or denied as belonging to our century, the crowning claim of all, which
cannot be taken from her, is that, along with the ideas embodied in
commonweal and commonwealth, she has added the other of equal dignity
and worth—Public Health.
THE CENTURY’S ARMIES AND ARMS
BY LIEUTENANT-COLONEL ARTHUR L. WAGNER,
_Assistant Adjutant General, U. S. Army_.
A true appreciation of the progress made in the arts and sciences
in the nineteenth century can be obtained only by contrasting the
conditions found at present with those existing a hundred years ago.
The difference between the sperm candle and the electric light; between
the stage-coach and the rapid-flying express train; between the flail
and the threshing machine; between the hand-loom and the machinery of
the modern woollen mill; between the cruel medical operations of five
score years ago and the skillful surgery, with the use of anæsthetics,
of the present day; or between the mail-carrier with letters in his
saddle-bags and the electric telegraph flashing news instantaneously
from continent to continent; marks the difference between the beginning
of the nineteenth and the opening of the twentieth centuries.
But there is scarcely an agency that has been employed during this
wonderful century for the improvement of the condition of man that has
not been enlisted for his destruction. Steam, electricity, chemical
knowledge, engineering skill, and mechanical invention have all been
employed in the science of war, and everything pertaining to the
organization, arms, equipment, supply, training, and even the size of
armies, has been so revolutionized that there is scarcely anything in
common between the forces that fought at Marengo and those employed in
recent wars, except the characteristic of being armed and organized
bodies of soldiers under military leadership.
The nineteenth century was born in the midst of war. All Europe was
an armed camp, and the contest between the principles of the French
Revolution and the old feudal system had taken the form of actual
strife upon the field of battle. A great alteration was taking place in
the methods of war; the old pedantic strategy of the Austrian school
had already received a rude shock at the hands of the brilliant young
Bonaparte, and the old tactical methods bequeathed by Frederick the
Great were, also, soon to be shattered by the genius of the newer and
greater warrior. To appreciate the changes that were already being made
in military methods, a brief glance at the organization of the armed
forces in the latter part of the eighteenth century is necessary. The
Prussian army, as organized by the great Frederick, was regarded as the
finest of the time. In it the most exact and machine-like methods were
observed, the most careful accuracy in marching was required, drill was
carried to mechanical perfection, volley firing was conducted with the
greatest precision, and no skirmishers were employed. In comparison
with later methods, the whole system may be characterized as exact,
methodical, and slow. Armies were supplied entirely from magazines, by
means of long and cumbrous trains, and the art of moving rapidly and
subsisting on the country was still to be discovered.
[Illustration: OLD STYLE SHRAPNEL.]
The French army produced by the Revolution, and led by such men as
Dugommier, Hoche, Moreau, and Bonaparte, was trained to operate
in column, to deploy quickly into line, and generally to act with
celerity; while the impoverished treasury of the republic compelled its
armies to live entirely upon the country in which they were operating,
as the only alternative to starvation. This entailed serious hardships
to the soldiers, and great distress to the population of the country
in which they were acting, but it marked distinctly the beginning of a
new system of supply, which contributed greatly to the rapid movement
of armies. The French army, at the beginning of the century, contained
no regiments, but was organized into demi-brigades, each of which
consisted of four battalions, each comprising ten companies, two of
which were trained to act as skirmishers. These demi-brigades, with
one or more batteries of artillery, constituted a division, to which a
small force of cavalry was generally added. In 1805 Napoleon, then the
supreme ruler of France, made important changes in the organization of
the army. The demi-brigade was replaced by the two battalion regiments,
each regiment now consisting of eight companies. Two regiments formed a
brigade, and two brigades and a regiment of light infantry constituted
a division. On the light regiment devolved the duties of skirmishers;
namely, to harass and develop the enemy before the main attack. The
divisions were grouped into larger organizations known as _corps
d’armée_, or army corps, each of which consisted of all arms of the
service, and was, in fact, a force capable of operating independently
as a small army.[2] A corps of reserve cavalry was also formed. In
numbers the cavalry was equal to one fourth, and the artillery one
eighth of the strength of the infantry. The infantry was armed with a
smooth-bore, muzzle-loading, flint-lock musket, which required some
thirty-two distinct motions in loading, and which had an effective
range of only two hundred yards, though by giving it a high elevation
it could do some damage at twice that distance. This weapon bore about
the same relation to the magazine rifle of the present day that the
old-fashioned sickle bears to the modern mowing-machine. The artillery
consisted of muzzle-loading, smooth-bore guns, which had less than
one fourth the range of the modern infantry rifle. Cavalry, being
able to form with comparative impunity within close proximity of the
opposing infantry, could sweep down upon it in a headlong charge; and
the use of the sabre on the field of battle, now so rare, was then an
almost invariable feature of every conflict. Under Napoleon the armies
continued to “live on the country,” but magazines of supplies were
carefully prepared to supplement the exhausted resources of the theatre
of war.
[2] Brigades and divisions had long existed, but the army corps
was a creation of Napoleon.
In besieging a fortified place, the first parallel or line of batteries
of the besiegers was habitually established at about six hundred yards
from the enemy’s works, a distance then at long artillery range, but
which would now be under an annihilating fire from infantry rifles. The
cannon used solid shot almost exclusively, though early in the present
century a projectile, invented by Lieutenant Shrapnel, of the British
army, and which now universally bears his name, was introduced. This
consisted of a thin cast-iron shell filled with round musket balls, the
interstices between which were filled by pouring in melted sulphur or
resin, to solidify the mass and prevent it from cracking the shell when
the piece was fired. A hole was bored through the mass of sulphur and
bullets to receive the bursting charge, which was just sufficient to
rupture the shell and release the bullets, which then moved with the
velocity that the projectile had at the moment of bursting. Shrapnel
has at all times been a destructive missile, though in its early form
it was insignificant in comparison with the “man-killing projectile”
which now bears the same designation.
[Illustration: CONGREVE ROCKET.]
In the year 1806, the Congreve rocket was added to the weapons of war.
It consisted of a case of wrought iron, filled with a composition of
nitre, charcoal, and sulphur, in such proportions as to burn more
slowly than gunpowder. The head of the rocket consisted of a solid
shot, a shell, or a shrapnel. At the base was fastened a stick, which
secured steadiness for the projectile in its flight. The range of the
rocket was scarcely more than five hundred yards, though a subsequent
improvement, which dispensed with the guide-stick and substituted three
tangential vents, increased the range very considerably. Congreve
rockets were used with effect in Europe in 1814, and against our raw
militia at Bladensburg in the same year. They seem, however, to have
depended more upon the moral effect of their hissing rush than upon any
really destructive properties, and were effective mainly against raw
troops and cavalry. The rocket is now an obsolete weapon, having made
its last appearance in war in the Austrian army in 1866.
[Illustration: U. S. RIFLE MUSKET, 1855.]