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Our "Health Wardens"

About This Item

  • Title: Our "Health Wardens"
  • Date: 28 July 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00709
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 28 July 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Katherine Jackson Kaylen Michaelis Stephanie Blalock Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Our "Health Wardens"." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00709.xml (TEI)
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OUR "HEALTH WARDENS."

We have six Health Wardens (policemen) in Brooklyn, who are supposed to do a vast deal of good, and keep under everything deleterious—everything in the way of a nuisance. We advisedly say, "supposed to do." For has any body ever seen one of these Health Wardens? Would the city be a bit the worse if these six were utterly blotted out of existence? or if they were furloughed? or if they were steeped in perpetual slumber?

Indeed, we boldly ask, since it comes to that, Are there any Health Wardens? Are they not a myth?

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