committee to inquire into the expediency of establishing a Board of Health. The man who made the motion was placed at its head, and the kindly disposed Speaker desired him to name his associates; he designated those to whom the cause would appeal. Word was sent to Dr. Bowditch and his fellow-sanitarians to come and present their reasons. A bill was drawn, but its champion did not care to have it discussed till late in the session, when many of the timid obstructionists would have hied themselves to their rural farms; and when speaking in its advocacy, he ignored the wails of the bereaved fathers and mothers of the Maplewood pupils, and based his plea entirely on economic grounds, saying that by the aid of law preventable diseases might be checked; that it had been shown that typhoid fever was a preventable disease. He called attention to the fact that it generally attacked persons in the productive age, and that scarcely one of the three hundred and thirty-five towns in the State but had at least one annual victim. He said a man of twenty-one represented an investment of ten thousand dollars; that it had cost at least five hundred dollars each year of somebody's money—public or private—to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate him; and thus the State sustained an annual loss of five million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
It seems humiliating that the issues of life and death should be made to hinge on a pocket argument, but it was effective, and the law establishing a State Board of Health was enacted June 21, 1869. The members were to be appointed by the Governor and Council. The act was not twenty-four hours old before an application from an unprogressive doctor-constituent came to its champion for a position. The Governor said, "I suppose you have some friends you would like to see on the board?" "No," was the answer, "only I think it goes without saying who should be at its head—Dr. H. I. Bowditch, who has worked disinterestedly for so many years toward this consummation; for the rest, all I ask is that you will not make it worthless by appointing a set of nobodies, on account of their political opinions." The Governor rose to the occasion; the pace he set has never been lost, and in the twenty-five years of its existence many of the ablest men in the Commonwealth have lent their powers to make it a success. The action of the member from the "western county" may be compared to that of the man who turns the jet and applies the match, thus setting the already waiting illuminant alight a small but very indispensable operation. There are now thirty-six State Boards patterned very closely after this, under whose guidance a whole army of sanitarians is at work.
"Its banner bears the single line,
'Our duty is to save.'"
