The Work of the Department of Street Cleaning.—In any city a menace to the health of its citizens exists in the refuse and garbage. The city streets, when dirty, contain countless millions of germs which have come from decaying material, or from people ill with disease. In most large cities a department of street cleaning not only cares for the removal of dust from the streets, but also has the removal of garbage, ashes, and other waste as a part of its work. The disposal of solid wastes is a tremendous task. In Manhattan the dry wastes are estimated to be 1,000,000 tons a year in addition to about 175,000 tons of garbage. Prior to 1895 in the city of New York garbage was not separated from ashes; now the law requires that garbage be placed in separate receptacles from ashes. Do you see why? The street-cleaning department should be aided by every citizen; rules for the separation of garbage, papers, and ashes should be kept. Garbage and ash cans should be covered. The practice of upsetting ash or garbage cans is one which no young citizen should allow in his neighborhood, for sanitary reasons. The best results in summer street cleaning are obtained by washing or flushing the streets, for thus the dirt containing germs is prevented from getting into the air. The garbage is removed in carts, and part of it is burned in huge furnaces. The animal and plant refuse is cooked in great tanks; from this material the fats are extracted, and the solid matter is sold for fertilizer. Ashes are used for filling marsh land. Thus the removal of waste matter may pay for itself in a large city.
The upper picture shows the stables where millions of flies were bred; the lower picture, the disinfection of manure so as to prevent the breeding of flies.
An Experiment in Civic Hygiene.—During the summer of 1913 an interesting experiment on the relation of flies and filth to disease was carried on in New York City by the Bureau of Public Health and Hygiene of the New York Association for improving the condition of the poor. Two adjoining blocks were chosen in a thickly populated part of the Bronx near a number of stables which were the sources of great numbers of flies. In one block all houses were screened, garbage pails were furnished with covers, refuse was removed and the surroundings made as sanitary as possible. In the adjoining block conditions were left unchanged. During the summer as flies began to breed in the manure heaps near the stables all manure was disinfected. Thus the breeding of flies was checked. The campaign of education was continued during the summer by means of moving pictures, nurses, boy scouts, and school children who became interested.
At the end of the summer it was found that there had been a considerable decrease in the number of cases of fly-carried diseases and a still greater decrease in the total days of sickness (especially of children) in the screened and sanitary block. The table and pictures speak for themselves. If such a small experiment shows results like this, then what might a general clean-up of a city show?
In the upper picture a little girl can be seen dumping garbage from the fire escape. She was a foreigner and knew no better. The picture below shows the result of such garbage disposal.
Public Hygiene.—Although it is absolutely necessary for each individual to obey the laws of health if he or she wishes to keep well, it has also become necessary, especially in large cities, to have general supervision over the health of people living in a community. This is done by means of a department or board of health. It is the function of this department to care for public health. In addition to such a body in cities, supervision over the health of its citizens is also exercised by state boards of health. But as yet the government of the United States has not established a Bureau of Health, important as such a bureau would be.
The Functions of a City Board of Health.—The administration of the Board of Health in New York City includes a number of divisions, each of which has a different work to do. Each is in itself important, and, working together, the entire machine provides ways and means for making the great city a safe and sanitary place in which to live. Let us take up the work of each division of the health board in order to find out how we may coöperate with them.
