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A Case for the Board of Health

About This Item

  • Title: A Case for the Board of Health
  • Date: 13 July 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00729
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 13 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: Natalie B. Holmes Kendall Earles Kaylen Michaelis Samantha Gilmore Kevin McMullen Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "A Case for the Board of Health." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00729.xml (TEI)
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A CASE FOR THE BOARD OF HEALTH.

If one or two cases like the following were only pursued with inflexible determination, by the Board of Health, the said Board would save themselves a great deal of trouble. Once settle it that such filth breeders and fever-spreaders must be stopped, how easy we would get along!

There is a nuisance of long standing (and large spreading also,) in the grounds about forty rods southerly from the southwesterly corner of Myrtle and Classon avenues, in the 7th Ward.1 It consists of an old and filthy stable from which flow out the drainings of a number of dead-milk cows. This draining runs down and spreads itself out in flat pools and stagnant rotten ponds, some distance from the stable, and sends up continual streams of horrid incense, around the whole neighborhood.

The keeper of this place promised to abate the nuisance on two or three occasions last summer, but managed to evade it somehow. He has now constructed a trench and covered it over, to lead the drainage some rods away northwardly. This is the present condition of the stables. The current hot weather it is a most dangerous place. The filthy ponds alluded to are replenished every few days, and so keep up a continual exhalation.

Notes:

1. From 1856 until 1859, Whitman lived in the Seventh Ward at 91½ Classon Ave., which was near the corner of Myrtle and Classon. [back]

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