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“The Hygiene of New York City”

Senatorial Investigating Committee (to Mr. T___, the Health Officer). "Do you know, Sir, what Hygiene is?"
Health Officer. "Oh yes! I know Hygiene. It's the effluvia arising from stagnant water, the consequences of which is disease!"
[The Committee look astonished, and the Health Officer, suspicious of a blunder, adds: "Oh, I don't understand Greek!"]

This unsigned Harper's Weekly cartoon criticizes the
alarming ignorance of the current health officer of New York City.
At first, he identifies hygiene as its opposite, polluted water and air;
then, realizing his blunder, but unsure of what it was, he thinks the
investigating committee is referring to Hygieia, the Greek goddess of
health.
Following a yellow fever outbreak in 1803, New York City's Common
Council had established a Board of Health. Over the decades,
however, it became dominated by political appointees who were negligent
of their duties. As the city’s population quadrupled from almost
203,000 for Manhattan in 1830 to nearly 814,000 by 1860, cholera
epidemics, as well as numerous everyday public health problems, were
troublesome and demonstrated the board’s ineffectiveness.
The tenement houses built to accommodate the influx of foreign
immigrants and rural migrants were usually ill equipped to handle basic
sanitary needs. Latrines and outhouses emptied into yards and
streets, while the city's drainage system was designed for surface
water, not sewage. When the municipal government awarded contracts
for street cleaning and other city services based on political
considerations, the results were neglect and inefficiency. Up to 30,000 horses, the
major mode of urban transit, packed waste into the narrow cobblestone
streets. Blood flowed into the streets from the slaughterhouses,
while tanning yards emitted a powerful stench. The putrid
atmosphere was so bad during the humid summer months that residents who
could leave the city generally did so.
In 1865, the Citizens' Association, a "good government"
reform organization, sought to circumvent the city's Democratic machine
and appeal to the public and the Republican-controlled state administration.
The Citizens' Association produced a landmark, 20-volume study of
sanitation in the entire city, which it condensed to a 500-page
document. As incidents of cholera and
small pox threatened to become city-wide epidemics, Harper's Weekly
and other newspapers reported the group's findings to gain support for
the Metropolitan Health Bill. The proposed legislation was drafted
by Dorman Eaton, a prominent civic reformer and chairman of the
Citizens' Association's legal committee. In April 1865 (shortly
after this cartoon appeared) the bill
passed the New York senate, with a 17-6 majority consisting of all 16
Republicans and one Democrat who was a physician. The bill met
defeat, though, in the assembly, 60-52.
Public interest in the legislation revived when news reached
the United States of a cholera epidemic in Europe. It was expected
that, as in the past, the disease would arrive on American shores within
a few months or a year. The press kept the public updated on the
transmission of the disease across Europe; it hit England and France in
the late summer of 1865. During the fall election
season, campaign coverage had to compete for headlines with news of the
approaching cholera epidemic.
In the fall of 1865, Republicans gained seats in both houses, with the
radical faction making a strong showing. In his annual message,
Governor Reuben Fenton emphasized the health crisis and urged passage of
the bill. The final version of the measure included a commission
consisting of the four police commissioners, the health officer of the
Port of New York, as well as four commissioners appointed by the
governor, three of whom were required to be physicians. On
February 19, 1866, the bill passed the New York senate, 22-2, and the
assembly, 74-28, and was signed into law by Governor Fenton on February
26.
Governor Fenton's appointments to the new Metropolitan Board of
Health were generally praised, and they set about their task with
vigor. Within a few weeks, they secured an agreement with city
butchers to clean up and eventually relocate their
slaughterhouses. Health standards were imposed on the milk
industry, the water supply was improved, and city streets even began to
be cleaned, with the removal of thousands of tons of horse manure.
When the cholera epidemic broke out later in the spring of 1866, the
Board of Health fought it with a stringent health code, house to house
inspections, disinfectants, and quarantines. Although the
Democratic New York World charges the board with
"terrorism," the death toll in New York City was kept under
500, compared with 1200 in Cincinnati and 3500 in St. Louis. With
its short-term success, the New York Board of Health served as a model
adopted by other cities and states.
The passage of the
Metropolitan Health Act by the New York state legislature in 1866
illustrates many of the characteristics of reform in late-nineteenth
century America, which continue to serve as a model for reform efforts today: gathering statistical information by voluntary
associations and interest groups; publicizing the perceived public
problem through the news media; proposing a solution centered on a
government board of appointed experts; and securing legislative approval by
claiming an impending crisis (in this case, of cholera).
Robert C. Kennedy
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