5. Scientific Research and Sanitation.
6. Sanitary Reports and Statistics.
The above lengthy description of our present public health activities has been necessary not only in order to demonstrate their character, and scope, but also as an illustration of the variety of legal authority existing for the enactment on the part of the general Government of public health work.
This paper will not admit of the incorporation into it of the national laws relating to public health which are now operative, but a careful inspection of these laws will demonstrate that they will admit of such interpretation as would make possible an almost unlimited amplification of our present public health activities, the limit being only one of appropriations and officers.
Careful analysis of the present health laws and activities will also show that the Government is seeking to control nothing which any other public health organization would wish to control. The foundation of the national public health service is in the quarantine law of February 15, 1893, referred to above. The quarantine service is today almost entirely national, notwithstanding a local sentiment for State or municipal control, which exists in two or three cities only, and which it is believed is destined to a short tenure for the following reasons:
It must be admitted that maritime quarantine should be a national affair. It is a concomitant to commerce, over which under the Constitution the national government has absolute control, and it naturally belongs to that department of the government regulating commerce in other respects. In other words, it seems especially appropriate that quarantine should be one of the functions of the Treasury Department which registers, licenses and enrolls all merchant vessels of the United States, inspects the hulls, boilers and machinery of such vessels, determines the number of passengers which said vessels may carry and provides for the housing and rations of the crews.
Besides this, it carefully examines all pilots upon American vessels and determines upon granting them licenses. It enforces the navigation laws and aids vessels in distress by an efficient revenue cutter service. It also provides for the care of the sick of our merchant marine. Then why should it relegate to a State authority, or health officer of some small port, the one remaining act of surveillance over vessels, namely, the determination as to whether they may be admitted to entry from a sanitary standpoint? Why should it be left to a local appointee, responsible only to a mayor or governor, the power to determine whether all the people and the merchandise on vessels destined for all ports of the United States, shall be permitted to enter without detention; and why should it give this local officer power to detain such vessels; and further than that, why should such local officers desire that power?
In the same way, the other activities of the Public Health Service conflict in no way with the functions and prerogatives of the State and local boards of health. Therefore, the term “national health control” is a misnomer. The term “national health co-operation” would be much more descriptive of the conditions actually existing. The interstate health activities above described must of necessity be governmental functions. The duties and responsibilities connected with them could not be discharged by States with any degree of uniformity. Therefore, interstate commerce laws are considered as appropriate national enactments, and their operation encroaches upon no State or municipal rights.
It may be said with a feeling of conviction that the health control in the United States today is just exactly in accordance with the desires of the people. The people know that their State and municipal boards are being aided by the health activities of the national government rather than being encroached upon. In addition to this the Federal Public Health Service and the State and municipal boards are acting in harmony to the following ends: They are controlling commerce, in order that commerce may not be clogged, and where necessary they are laying the net of healthful restraint for purposes of good.
The government is receiving the good-will and co-operation of the State and local health authorities in its work of catching and throwing back the diseased persons who seek entrance to our shores in the great Waves of immigration. They stand together to check the merchant or the manufacturer when he is ready or willing to risk the lives of the people by furnishing improper or impure food or drug products. They stand together to frustrate the lawyer who seeks by illegal technicality in the behalf of an individual, or steamship company perhaps, to force a way around a sanitary barrier erected for the protection of the people at large. Again, the municipal, State and government health authorities are standing together to stimulate the knowledge of our legislators in public health needs and are combining their knowledge to insure reasonable appropriations for the carrying out of general public health projects.