Entered October 21, 1901, as second-class matter, Post Office at Brattleboro, Vt. CONTENTS. Address of Welcome, by F. R. Dowly, Mayor of Montpelier.... Remarks at the Opening of the Eleventh Annual School for Health Officers, by C. S. Caverly, M. D., President of the State Board of ADDRESS OF WELCOME. BY F. R. DowLY, MAYOR OF MONTPELIER. Mr. President, Members of the State Board of Health, Health Officers of the Various Towns and Cities of the State: I bid you welcome here to hold your first school of instruction in Montpelier, and your eleventh in the organization of the society, as I understand it. I want to say that Montpelier is ready and willing for any improvement for health, wealth or happiness, and without doubt, as you all know, health should come first. We really cannot have the other two, and enjoy them, without health. The State Board of this state is not always upheld by the various town and city officers, as I have come to know. Not long since, we had an epidemic of smallpox in Berlin, a neighboring village, and if I remember correctly there were some cases within a mile of this city. The health officer of Berlin, Dr. Huse, thought he was right and the selectmen thought they were right. However, they did not agree. The health officer called on the State Board for advice, and after that things went along. There was no more fear here in Montpelier. All this was owing to the health officers and their good work. We have here in Montpelier one of the best health officers in the state, Dr. Lindsay. We have had him for several years. There may be just as good, but I doubt if there are any better in the state. Dr. Huse is another good one. I think it is true that every health officer should be kept in office as long as possible, that is, of course, if he does good work. I am not here to educate you, but simply to make you feel at home, so that you will be glad to come here again. Montpelier is always glad to have these schools or meetings here. I want to tell a story of a couple up in Roxbury who had been going together a long time, and of course John was anxious to get married. Every time he vowed his love was strong and would endure as long as water runs or grass grows, Mary put him off. One day John asked her if she was not satisfied and Mary replied if John would love her as long as Zed Stanton ran or held office she would be satisfied. This story might be applied to myself as to holding office. I hope you will feel so at home here you will be willing and glad to come in the future, either as a school, convention, legislators or individually. I am glad to see you and welcome you, and I am sure Montpelier is glad of your visit. The Apollo club extends a cordial invitation to you all to visit their rooms and avail yourselves of the amusements there. My best wish is that these health officers will learn a great deal from the instructors who are to be here, so they will be second to none in any state in the union. REMARKS AT THE OPENING OF THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL SCHOOL FOR HEALTH OFFICERS. BY C. S. CAVERLY, M. D., PRESIDENT OF THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH. Ten years ago the first state Health Officers' School in this country was held in Vermont. To-night's session starts the school on its second decade. Until now these schools have always been held in the city of Burlington. That city has gradually become the headquarters of the State Health Department, by reason of the location of the State Laboratory there. Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, it has seemed best to hold this session of the school elsewhere than in Burlington; and it is certainly fitting that this distinctly Vermont institution should come to the capital of the state. If the experiment of moving this school, of holding it in a new place proves successful, both in the success of the session and in the effect it has on local sanitary conditions, it may be thought best to visit other localities. This school was, as many of you are aware, only one evidence of awakening interest in public health work in this state. It was the same practical interest that brought about the establishment of our State Laboratory. Following the legal establishment of both came real live work in Vermont for better health conditions; conditions that make for our highest physical welfare. In sanitary matters Vermont has, we believe, kept step with scientific progress, and this progress has been very great. Our health laws have multiplied apace, reflecting the popular interest in matters pertaining to health. Ten years ago our laws provided for boards of health, state and local, and prescribed the duties of these boards. These duties were the control of epidemic disease and, in a general way, the supervision of health conditions in the several towns. A law providing for the registration of vital statistics was only just enacted, and schoolhouse sanitation was the subject of an act of 1896. Slaughter-houses were given some attention, and the Laboratory of Hygiene was established in 1898. This latter law was the most significant and important health legislation that the state had ever had. The Laboratory at once became a guiding force in most of our practical health work. Each succeeding legislature has been generous with its public health laws. Old laws have been improved, and new ones enacted; the registration laws have been kept up-to-date; the powers and duties of the state and local boards of health have been constantly broadened; schoolhouse sanitation and the sanitation of all public buildings have received attention; a modern food law is in force and dairies, creameries and slaughter-houses and markets are subject to regulation; laws have been enacted looking to the protection of water supplies, and providing for the laying of sewers in towns; there are tuberculosis laws and laws dealing with the spitting nui sance; the practice of embalming is subject to legal regulation, and a sanitary inspector and engineer are added to our working force; diphtheria antitoxin is distributed free to our people; and finally our Laboratory of Hygiene has had its duties increased beyond anything that could have been guessed at its inception, and this school has become a legal institution. Surely we have laws enough, mostly good laws. From the laws of a decade ago which provided for boards of health, with powers rather vaguely defined and quite general, we have now a health code dealing specifically with actual conditions affecting health, and so framed as to make its enforcement possible. What of results? Sickness and death are still with us. Yet we are sure that as far as these are now preventable, we have less sickness and fewer deaths than formerly. This is especially true of that class of infections which prevail among those of young and middle life. During the last two years for which figures are available, viz. 1906 and 1907, there were only 99 deaths in the state from diphtheria. During the years 1896 and 1897, a decade earlier there were 285 deaths from this disease in Vermont. We can surely attribute this saving of life to our health laws and health officials. Our recently enacted law providing for the free distribution of diphtheria antitoxin must certainly reduce this present mortality still more. Typhoid fever in 1896 and 1897 caused 162 deaths, and ten years later only 108. This preventable and inexcusable disease will show still further and greater reduction, when all our towns exercise due care in the selection of water supplies. Notable progress is being made in this direction. The campaign against typhoid is a campaign for pure water. An act of the Legislature of 1902, amended by the Legislature of 1904, gave the State Board of Health authority to prohibit the use of water by any community, "when, in its opinion, the same is so contaminated, unwholesome or impure that the use thereof endangered the public health." It appeared to the State Board, in 1905, that there were five towns in the state using water that was "so contaminated, unwholesome, or impure that the use thereof endangered the public health." The State Board arrived at this conclusion only after repeated and thorough analyses of the supplies of all these towns, after the local conditions had been studied by an expert engineer employed by the Board from without the state, and after a fair and careful study of the incidence of water-borne diseases, especially typhoid fever, in each of these towns. It is often argued, not without reason, that the logical solution of the typhoid problem lies in the conservation of our sources of water supply: that our streams and other bodies of water, from which our towns could most economically draw this supply, should be protected from pollution. As an abstract proposition, this is quite reasonable. It is an exceedingly promising sign of the times, to see the widespread and very live interest that is being taken all over our country in this subject. All of our large rivers, and most of our small streams and lakes, are now merely open sewers. The water of none, untreated, is safe |