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The Plagiarized Health Report

About This Item

  • Title: The Plagiarized Health Report
  • Date: 15 February 1859
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01083
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 15 February 1859: 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: Kaylen Michaelis Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Plagiarized Health Report." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01083.xml (TEI)
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THE PLAGIARISED HEALTH REPORT.

Some time since we detected the fact that a great part of the recently issued report of the present Health Officer1 was copied from that of his predecessor. Our cotemporaries, with more charity to the officer than justice to the public, tried to gloss over the offence. We have since made a second examination of the report in question, and find the reading matter of it to consist of 26 paragraphs; of which two are quoted, from Inspector Morton's2 New York report; 10 are stolen bodily, without quotation marks, from said report; 9 are stolen in like manner from Dr. Cleveland's report3; leaving 5 unaccounted for, which, though the presumption is of course the other way, we are willing to give Mr. Boyd4 the credit of. The paragraphs taken without acknowlegment from Mr. Morton (which constitute the bulk of the report) are doctored a little—just a few words changed or omitted here and there, paragraphs commenced differently, &c., so as to avoid detection by the casual observer.

Is it not a farce to palm off such a compendium as this, as an original report?—and is it not a shame that the city should have to pay for printing it and sending it forth to the world as part of Brooklyn's official history and public records?

We will add, for the satisfaction of the curious, that the entire copy of this original "report" was sent to the Common Council and placed in the Corporation Printer's hands, in MSS, and not in printed extracts—thus showing the animus and intention of the appropriator. Would that old Isaac Disraeli5 were alive, that Dr. Boyd might be immortalised in a new edition of the Curiousities of Literature!

Notes:

1. Dr. Samuel K. Boyd was elected Health Officer in May of 1859 and, apparently, later became a lawyer. [back]

2.  [back]

3.  [back]

4. Dr. Samuel K. Boyd was elected Health Officer in May of 1859 and, apparently, later became a lawyer. [back]

5.  [back]

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