The Board of Health takes care of the public in many ways besides these. It keeps a very careful watch upon the water supply of the town, or city, so as to keep the houses and factories from running their drainage, or sewage, into it; for this, as you already know, might cause the spread of typhoid fever and of other diseases of the bowels and stomach.
The Board of Health sends men to examine, or inspect, the milk the dairymen bring, to see that it is sweet and pure, and that there are no infectious germs in it. And it sends men out into the country to examine the dairy farms and see that the cows are properly fed, and that the barns in which they are milked are kept clean; and that the water in which the milk pans and bottles are washed comes from clean, pure wells or springs.
WHAT MILK INSPECTION MEANS
Clean barns, cows, pails, and milkers mean clean milk. The cows here stand in fresh, clean sawdust.
Another thing that the Board of Health does is to send an inspector round to look very carefully at all the meat that is sold in the butcher shops, and at all the fruits and vegetables at the grocers’. If he finds any meat that is diseased or tainted or bad, or any fruit or vegetables that are beginning to spoil, or any flour, sugar, or canned goods that have been mixed with cheaper stuffs that are not good to eat,—in fact, are what the law calls adulterated,—he may seize the bad and dangerous foods and destroy them, and summon to court the dealers who are trying to sell them. Then the dealers are fined or perhaps sent to prison.
So, you see, the Board of Health is one of the very best friends that you have, trying to keep your food pure and good, the water that you drink clean and wholesome, and the milk sweet and free from dirt or disease germs. You ought to help these officers and their inspectors in every way that you can. I know that it is sometimes troublesome to obey all their rules; and perhaps when you don’t know what the dangers are which they are trying to guard you against, it seems to you that they are too particular about a great many things. But just see what they have done already to make our cities and houses healthier and pleasanter places to live in.
Only one hundred and fifty years ago, for instance, that terrible disease called smallpox killed hundreds of thousands of people every year in Europe; and it attacked the eyes and blinded so many of those who recovered from it, that nearly half the poor blind people in the blind asylums had had their sight destroyed by it. In smallpox there is a terrible eruption, or breaking out, upon the skin, which is likely to leave it pitted and scarred; and even fifty years ago it was exceedingly common to see people who had been pitted by smallpox, or, as the expression was, “pock-marked.”
Cows have a disease somewhat like this, but much less dangerous, called cow-pox. Years ago, before dairies were inspected as they are now, dairy maids often caught this disease from the cows they milked, so that their hands would break out with pock-marks.
About a hundred years ago, a Dr. Richard Jenner discovered that the dairy maids in the country district in which he lived, who had caught this mild infection from the cows they milked, never caught smallpox even when they were exposed to it. So after studying over the subject for some years, he took a little of the matter, or pus, from the eruption on the udder of a cow that had cow-pox, scratched the arm of a little patient of his, and rubbed some of the pus into it. Only a short time after, the family of this little boy was exposed to smallpox, and all the other children took it badly, but he escaped.