The Metropolitan Board of Health of the city of New York have already accomplished a sanitary work from which other great cities may learn many useful lessons. They have reformed the tenement-houses, suppressed dangerous epidemics, cleaned and disinfected the vaults, and removed or regulated all offensive trades; but the streets have been always entirely beyond their control, and the Board of Health are not in the least degree responsible for their condition, Street-cleaning in New York is a corporation job. There can be no doubt that, in so far as the streets are concerned, New York is the most filthy great city in the civilized world. Our standard of comparison should be the streets of the great cities of Europe, which are as much cleaner than the streets of Boston, as ours are cleaner than those of New York. The dirt of the streets of Boston is made up, in great part, of the excrement of horses. This is allowed to accumulate, being alternately dried by the sun and air, and soaked by the rains and watering carts, until it forms a foul and dangerous compost, tending directly, through the air with which it is in contact, to the production of disease. The interests of public health require that it be removed with much greater frequency than is now practised. We are of opinion that, during the summer and early autumn, every street in the city should be cleaned once in twenty-four hours, and the great thoroughfares by night. There are, in all parts of Boston, filthy back-yards, alleys, and passage-ways, broken down and overflowing vaults, and in the older portions, disused wells and cisterns, which are receptacles for dirt. All these nuisances should be reformed. Offensive trades, like fat-melting and bone-boiling, are carried on in open vats in the midst of a crowded population. They should be compelled to use methods, tried and improved in New York, by which the sickening vapors may be entirely consumed. The authority to control these trades is given by statute. House-offal, or swill, is allowed to become putrid before removal from the houses of the citizens. The offal is a source of profit, being kept by special ordinance free from mixture with ashes, which would tend to prevent its becoming offensive; but this enforced division of refuse material makes it the more obligatory upon the city authorities to take the dangerous portion away before it undergoes decomposition. In our opinion public health requires that house-offal should be removed, in summer and early autumn, every day from every house. Our tenement-houses are in a condition discreditable to a civilized community. It is only necessary to visit Friend street court, or the "Crystal Palace," in Lincoln street, for any citizen to see under what desperate circumstances the occupants of these, and hundreds of other similar houses are compelled to live. Their rents are enormous, and their condition calls for the relief which the legislature of 1868 intended to afford them through the Tenement-House Law. This law has been a dead letter, but the interests of public health require that it be enforced without delay. It is now no one's duty to inspect the fresh provisions offered for sale in Boston, while the law provides for the destruction of all which are unsound, and of all meat of any calf killed when less than four weeks old. We believe that public health requires the enforcement of these laws, and we would respectfully suggest that a systematic inspection of meats, fish, vegetables and fruits be made by city authority in a manner similar to the inspection of milk, which has proved to be so useful. We think that all the reforms to which we have referred are practicable. They concern every citizen, whether he may chance to live. in a good home, with apparently wholesome surroundings, or in the most wretched tenement-house; for no one can escape the general influence of the sanitary condition of the city in which he dwells. These reforms would require an outlay of money, but we be. lieve they would prove to be good investments, and that a true economy demands them. The money value of human life to a community is real. A destructive epidemic is expensive. Moreover, a clean and un questionably healthy city, such as Boston might be made, would have attractions for permanent residents and transient visitors which could not fail to favorably affect its commercial interests. It might also well be an object of pride with every citizen to furnish in Boston an example of public cleanliness and public health which other American cities would imitate. Very respectfully Your obedient servants, HENRY BARTLETT, JAMES C. WHITE, WILLIAM READ, P. P. INGALLS, Consulting Physicians of the City of Boston. BOSTON, April 14, 1870. |