The Public Health.

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THE PUBLIC HEALTH.

Our local government is often complained of, and sometimes eulogised. The fact is, it is in some respect wofully defective and circumlocutory, and in others it is as good as it well could be. Take for instance the County Charitable Institutions at Flatbush. We do not believe that there are in the world public charities more intelligently, more humanely, and at the same time more honestly and economically managed that these now are. If the people hereafter choose to elect worse men for Superintendents than we have now, the administration may decline; but at present it is as perfect as any human government can be.

This is one extreme. The other is to be found in the administration of the health department. The school management has its faults, and so has the system of general expenditures and the administration of justice; but take it all in all, the department in which our public administration is weakest, is that which has care of the public health. An ill judged economy devotes to the entire matter of the preservation and care of public health in this great city, something less than the salary of one efficient officer should be. We have a health officer whose retention of his office depends on the varying political complexion of each annual Common Council; whose salary is totally inadequate to induce any competent man to devote proper time and attention to the duties; whose powers are so limited that nobody cares to obey his edicts; and whose efforts are thwarted rather than aided by a department of the Common Council, who meet only in the summer, as if there was no danger to public health from any cause but epidemics—as if there were no regular and constant sanitary reforms and obligations to be introduced and enforced throughout the city. Thus the Health Department, useful as it may be to ward off accidental epidemics, has in fact no existence and no functions whatever, so far as the permanent sanitary care of the city is concerned.

It is obvious that there are ample needs for constant, stringent, sanitary improvements and precautions. There are locations, reeking with filth and pregnant with disease; dwellings, over which, as over Dante's Inferno, may literally be inscribed

All hope abandon, ye who enter here.¹

There are practices carried on, which are destructive to the salubrity of the city—there is a general neglect of all the measures and precautions which are required to be adopted in crowded cities, to prevent the lists of mortality from being swelled far beyond their natural limits. On the other hand, there is every advantage of position, of grade, of climate, for the reducing the rates of mortality in this city below those of almost every city of similar size on earth. And the great essential artificial requisites to purgation—water and drainage—are, in the one supplied, the other in course of creation.

What then does Brooklyn need, in order to guarantee, that in her limits, density of population shall not induce abundance of disease, and brevity of life? She requires that the leisurely, educated, and wealthy of her citizens should form themselves into a voluntary association, to urge the passage of the laws that may be needed to confer the requisite powers on the department of public health—to disseminate sanitary information among the less-informed classes of her population—to lend assistance to the authorities and keep them up to the line of duty, in enforcing laws and ordinances against gross breaches of the sanitary duty of the citizens. Such an association has been formed. The medical profession, as is fit and proper, have taken the lead in its establishment. The press, (we can at least speak for ourselves,) will gladly further the useful mission they propose to accomplish. And the citizens at large, we hope, will take an interest in the movement, and further it by every effort, personal or pecuniary, that may be called for. We notice to-day one of the preliminary meetings of the association, and to that report we call the attention of our readers:

The Brooklyn Sanitary Association.—A number of the first citizens of Brooklyn, medical men and others, who have long seen and felt the necessity for such a course, have lately been taking active measures for the organization of an Association to promote sanitary reform in our city. The following extract from the constitution of the Society will explain the nature of its design:

The object of the association shall be: the improvement of the sanitary condition of the people, and so far as connected therewith, the advancement of their economic, and moral interests.

Frist—By promoting the investigation of facts and principles relating to personal, domiciliary, and public Hygiene;

Second—By diffusing information on the laws of health, and life, and the best means for their application.

Third—By such other influences and agencies as may be deemed expedient.

The third meeting of the Association took place last evening, in the Governor's Room at the City Hall. The attendance was not as large as might be expected, but, as one of the gentlemen truly remarked, it could not be expected that an Association of that nature should make its debut before the public armed cap-a-pie.

The business of the meeting last evening consisted mainly in the completion of the list of officers of the Association. Dr. Cummings was made Chairman pro tem, and a Committee which had been appointed at a previous meeting to make nominations, reported the following names, which were unanimously accepted:

Hon. Geo. Hall, President.² Dr. A. N. Bell, 1st V. President.³ Hon. Wm. Wall, 2d V. President.⁴ Dr. J. B. Jones, Recording Secretary.⁵ J. W. Adams, Esq., Corresponding Secretary.⁶ Dr. H. J. Cullen, Treasurer.⁷

There was nothing else of importance transacted, and after about an hour passed in an informal discussions of the plans and mode of future operations of the Society, the meeting adjourned, to meet again at an early day.

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