Third Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts

Abstract

PUBLIC health problems in New England are very much of the same character as they are in Old England. The countries and climates are both healthy, and there is plenty of preventible disease notwithstanding. In both countries bad habits have much to do with the causation of disease. In both countries civilisation takes but small account of natural laws, and as a consequence makes one step forwards where two might be made. One reason of this is partly want of knowledge, but the report before us shows that another not unimportant cause is attempting to gain present advantages by discounting the future. It is an old story told in a new country. There is a small present profit to a small minority of the community. at the cost of the remainder; but Nature, as has been well said, “just goes on levying her own cess in her own way,” i.e., she sends in her account, not only to the perpetrators of the damage, but to the whole community which tacitly submits to it.

Third Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts.

(Jan. 1872.)