Only by forcing ourselves into a receptive mood can we of the present credit the half of what is set before us concerning The City That Was. The shocked imagination rebels. It seeks relief in assuming that even a trained expert, a contemporaneous witness and investigator of the conditions described, in writing after they have passed away, unconsciously yields to the historian’s temptation to throw the past into dramatic relief by starting exaggerations.
Dr. Smith, however, leaves us no room for doubt. The appalling chapter in which he lays bare the New York of 1864 is a contemporaneous document. It is a physician’s report of a systematic medical inspection of New York in that year, as delivered before a Legislative Committee a few months later by the very physician who had directed the inspection.
Nevertheless, The City That Was is not New York alone. She is but a type. Her condition, with variations, may be multiplied, during the early years of the nineteenth century, by the total of the cities, towns, and villages in the world. In the work of regeneration some of these anticipated her. Others, including all throughout the territory of the United States, were aroused through her agitation and inspired by her example.
As a student of local history, the writer thought himself familiar with the many phases of the growth of New York; but the condition of the City as late as the period of our Civil War, as here depicted, startled him as might a revelation. He believes that no seriously minded man or woman can afford to ignore this volume. We owe it to ourselves and to one another fully to face its lesson.
We shall be shocked; we shall be filled with horror; but accepting the city that now is, great as her faults may be, with a new gratitude, we shall turn with anointed sympathy and understanding to any earnest voice that pleads for the city that should be. And, indeed, other volumes which Dr. Smith himself has in preparation, as suggestive and as interesting as this one, may help us on in this direction.
FRANK ALLABEN
CONTENTS
| [I] |
| A Blind Metropolis and Her Dying Children |
| Healthy or Unhealthy: Which?—Two Centuries and a Half Unhealthy—A Plague-Stricken Town—Enormous Sacrifice of Life |
| [II] |
| A Great Awakening in England |
| The Scourge of 1849—A Town That Was Immune—The Word Fitly Spoken |
| [III] |
| The Awakening in America |
| Apathy in the United States—An Incident That Counted—A Fever Nest—The Unknown Owner—Fear of Publicity—Agitation for Reform—The Citizens Association—A Health Bill—Sanitary Inspection of New York—An Anomaly in Law—Introduction of an Epoch-Making Bill |
| [IV] |
| New York, the Unclean |
| Alarm of Medical Men—A Systematic Investigation—A House-to-House Inspection—The Medical Experts—Plan of Inspection—Each Room Examined—Period of the Inspection—Distribution of Population—Tenant-House Packing—Avoidable and Inevitable Disease—Filthy Streets—Street Filth and Disease—Dead Animals—Filthy Courts and Alleys—Cesspool Abominations—Unbelievable Vileness—Special Nuisances—Cellar Population: Dens of Death—496 Persons Under Ground—A Visit to the Cave-Dwellers—Tenant-House Population—Cat Alley—Rag Pickers Row—Tenant-House Degeneration—The Rioters—Tenant-House Rot—Tenant-House Cachexy—Prevailing Diseases—Seeds of Disease Uncontrolled—Where Disease Flourishes—Smallpox—Smallpox in Tailored Garments—Typhus Fever—Intestinal Affections—Living at a Sewer’s Mouth—The Normal Death-Rate—Death-Rate of New York—New York, London, and Liverpool Compared—Constant Sickness—Where the Death Pressure Is Greatest—Some Scapegoats: Foreign Immigration—The Floating Population—Can the Causes of Disease Be Removed?—Improvements During the Inspection—How to Improve the People—Can Diseases Be Prevented?—Can Populous Towns Be Improved?—Cleanliness Preserves from Epidemics—Importance of Sanitary Government—The Entire Country Concerned—Smallpox in a Hotel Bedroom—New York Inoculates the Nation—Inefficiency of Health Organizations—Without Sanitary Government—The City Inspector’s Department—Sanitary Inspection—Inspection Must Be Thorough—The Remedy—An Efficient Health Board |
| [V] |
| Victory |
| Effect of the Hearing—Triumph at Last—The Reform National in Its Results |
| [VI] |
| The Legal Work of Dorman Bridgeman Eaton |
| Unrecognized Pioneers—A Constructive Reformer—Character of Previous Agitation—Incompetent Health Officers—Reform Movement Born—The Right Man—A Board with Extraordinary Powers—The Fight for the Bill—A Law Enacted and Sustained—The Regeneration of New York—Epidemics Checked—Sanitation in Other Cities—Reorganization of the Fire Department—Creation of a Dock Department—Reform of the Police Judiciary—Mental Traits of Dorman B. Eaton |
| [VII] |
| The Occult Power of Filth |
| Filth Diseases—The Scheme of Sanitation Changed—The Mystery of Infection—How Infection Works—What the Germ Is—The Function of Bacteria—Bacteria for Every Condition—The Deadly Tubercle Bacillus—How Bacteria Affect the Body—The Toxin Secreted—Bacteria Aim to Destroy the Body—Man’s Defenses—Destroy the Bacteria—The Value of Germicides |
| [VIII] |
| A Closing Word |
| Cleanliness Next to Godliness—Invisible Agencies in Filth—A Higher Civilization |