In the temples of Hygeia the statue of Apollo sometimes is found standing with that of the Goddess of Health for worship. This is possibly because he was originally a God of Medicine. I like to think, however, that there may be another explanation, and that is that he is present in his character of Helius, the Sun-God; and that this placing of the Sun-God in the temple of the Goddess of Health shows an appreciation even at that day of the health-giving effects of sunshine.

THE ROMAN EPOCH OR ERA OF MUNICIPAL SANITATION.

This epoch or era is so named because the great city of Rome set perhaps the most remarkable example of this phase of preventive medicine; a city which worshipped as a divinity the sweet, smiling Goddess of Health; a city in whose municipal administration the highest place was accorded to the sanitary corps; a city which supplied pure drinking water of crystalline purity from the distant mountain lakes and streams by its seven or eight great aqueducts, of which four still remain; aqueducts dating back to centuries before the Christian era; aqueducts considered so important that under Nerva and Trajan no less than seven hundred and twenty "curatores aquarum," engineers, architects and others were continuously employed at the public expense to look after the water supply of the city; a city with public baths capable of accommodating all the citizens, for there were some eight hundred bath-houses throughout the city, the Thermae of Caracalla, Diocletian, Nero, Titus, Agrippa, and countless others; a city with a system of sewers dating back to Tarquinius Priscus and Tarquinius Superbus, six hundred years B.C.; the Cloaca Maxima, the main drain, built in triple arches of Etruscan architecture, and so large that barges could float upon it all under the city; and so well constructed that no earthquake or other force has altered it. Though choked up nearly to its top by the artificial elevation of the surface of modern Rome, it is curious to see it still serving as the common sewer of the city after the lapse of nearly three thousand years. Under the Empire condemned criminals repaired the sewers. what better work could our modern jail-birds be put than that of similarly working for the sanitary well-being of their communities?

A proper drainage system is the first great duty of municipal sanitation. It must precede the waterworks, and be in readiness to carry off the water. To reverse this order has been well stigmatized as preposterous in its original signification of "pre" first and "posterus" coming last, or putting the cart before the horse. And the very worst use that can be made of drainage is to pollute

some river or stream with it; it is a waste of valuable fertilizers and a wrong to other communities down-stream. Cities and towns must ere long come to the purification of their sewage by septic tanks, chemical precipitation tanks, or filter beds, and the using up of the effluent in sub-soil irrigation.

A good water supply is the next most pressing duty of municipal sanitation. As a model from the past in this respect, I have spoken of Rome. Jerusalem also before the days of Solomon had aqueducts bringing water from miles distant, and through a reservoir which served as a sedimentation tank. We have another notable example in Tenochtitlan, the ancient Toltec capital, now the City of Mexico, with its admirable waterworks dating back long before the first meeting of Cortez and Montezuma, the Aztec chief. The difficulty of finding a pure water supply in sufficient quantity is facing every city. With the increase of population it is hardly possible to find a near-by watershed which is not more or less contaminated by the wastes of human life. Cities have too often either to adopt or continue a suspicious supply, or to trust to methods of filtration for the removal of the disease-producing elements. The remedy in some cases is fortunately to be found, as by Rome and Mexico, in bringing water from the distant mountains where it is pure and undefiled. Such a supply could be obtained for this city* from the Laurentian lakes to the north of us. This, or the purification of the water supply through filter beds, is a necessity that must soon be faced by this as by every other city.

Amongst the many further duties of municipal sanitation, I need only mention the inspection of milk, food, fruit, lodging houses, schools, public stables, abattoirs, etc.; the prevention of the exposure of meat and bread to dust, flies and unnecessary handling; the removal of garbage and dead animals; the prevention or, at least, the limitation of the soft coal smoke nuisance, and the inspection of plumbing. I have mentioned this last because I want to say a word about it. The health of the home and the household is more at the mercy of, and depends more upon, the work of the plumber than the doctor. There may be differences of opinion as to whether or no sewer gas carries the actual micro-organisms of disease, but all, I take it, will agree that the breathing of it in the home and the bedroom is calculated to so lower the resisting power of the body as to make it the more exposed to become the victim of contact infection. In the large cities there are inspectors of plumbing. There should be such officers in every municipality where there is a drainage system. Soil pipes should pass along the basement ceiling and pass underground only outside the wall, and

*Ottawa.

never be laid under the house. And every joint and fixture should be made and connected by a skilled workman, and not by an apprentice. In the book of the Proverbs of Solomon, the Son of David, King of Israel, we read that there were three things that were too wonderful for Agur, the son of Jakeh, yea, four things which he understood not: "The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid. It has been said that had that wise man lived in our day he would have been tempted to add a fifth cause of wonderment: "The way of a plumber with the drainage of a house." There are, doubtless, reliable, well-informed men amongst them, but the public should have greater protection. In my opinion, plumbers should only be admitted to practice under a license in sanitary work and drainage, given only after examination. Some similar system to that very rightly equired for physicians for the security and protection of the people. And the public should be educated and encouraged to choose for employment as plumbers and as inspectors men holding diplomas and certificates, such, for instance, as those of the Royal Sanitary Institute, now procurable in this country.

Another duty in municipal sanitation is the enforcement of the notification to the City Health Office of all cases of infectious disease including tuberculosis, and the keeping of a house register in which the medical and sanitary history of each house should be written, the name and number of the cases of infectious diseases, with their dates, and the means taken to improve the drainage and sanitary condition of the house. Such a register is kept in many cities; it should be so in all. Reference to it would be of inestimable value to those looking at a house with the view of purchasing or hiring it. It would also be a potent lever to move holders of house properties to keep them in proper sanitary condition.

Still another municipal duty is that of the suppression or extirpation of the rat. Rats are always a nuisance of the first order, and as carriers of disease a source of public danger. From the standpoint of health they possess no redeeming qualities, and the more quickly a great diminution in their numbers is affected the better it will be for everybody. The Rat Act of Denmark is one of the most remarkable laws in the history of legislation. It is the result of the grim fight carried on for ten long years by one man, Zuschlag, a civil engineer of Copenhagen, against the most merciless ridicule poured out by the Danish press, the galling contempt of scientists, and the lethargy of the people; but in the end he finds himself acclaimed as a benefactor of his country. He is now President of the powerful and influential "Association Internationale

pour la destruction rationelle des Rats," which has a membership of two thousand men of standing and known influence. In several countries government or port authorities have adopted Zuschlag's premium system of a national campaign on this principle. In England a society has recently been formed for the destruction of rats with the support of such men as Sir Patrick Manson, Sir James Crichton Browne, Sir T. Lauder Brunton, Lord Avebury and Professor Simpson. It has been calculated that there are as many rats in a country as there are men, women and children, and that each rat destroys one farthing's worth of food, grain or material per day. At that rate the six million rats of Canada cost us the enormous sum of over thirty thousand dollars per day.

But, in addition to this is the other terrible indictment as the conveyors and disseminators of disease germs. That enteric fever is spread by them is well established. And the important, indeed the all-important, part they play in the introduction and extension of bubonic plague is well summed up in the recent report of the Plague Committee appointed by the Secretary of State for India in the statement to the effect that unless the destruction of rats is carried out with the utmost energy it will be vain to hope to get the plague under control.

The last number of the British Medical Journal has an article on "The Cat as a Preventor of Plague." In villages in India where cats are numerous rats are scarce and plague unknown. In adjacent villages where cats are scarce rats are numerous and plague prevails. The cultivation of the cat has an advantage over some other plague preventives in that it does not conflict with any caste prejudices.

As Dr. Murphy has pointed out, the connection between rats and the plague has been apparently known since very early times. We read in the Bible that when the Philistines, after they had taken the Ark of God, were stricken with what was probably the bubonic plague, they evidently recognized, as we do to-day that the disease was carried from one section of the country to another by rats, for they endeavoured to propitiate Jehovah by offering five golden images of the most noticeable result of the disease, and five golden images of the family of Mus, probably Mus rattus or Mus decumanus-now known as the rat-images of the probable disseminators of the disease.

THE GOTHIC EPOCH OR ERA OF NATIONAL SANITATION.

This epoch has been given its name because Theodoric the Great, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, was the first in recent history to take a wide or national view in such matters. The torrent of vital energy

poured into the West by the Goths, with the collapse of the old inanimate routine of government and the old inanimate social system, the foundation of a new kind of government, and the rise of a new social fabric instinct and permeated through and through with the energy of the invading races, found one of its manifestations in the establishment of national sanitation.

After the Conquest, with all Italy laid at his feet, Theodoric held court in the city of Ravenna by the Adriatic, and there placed the protection of the public health entirely under the control of the central government, and recognized the great truth later enunciated by one of England's Prime Ministers: "The health of the people is the first duty of the statesman."

In former ages the three great enemies of national welfare, happiness and progress were deemed to be war, famine and pestilence. Until less than a century ago all these were regarded as beyond the realm and reach of human science, and were accepted as the infliction of the gods, or as the mysterious scourges of Providence, whereby nations were chastened for their sins.

From war and the fear of war we in this country are most fortunately and happily free.

As for famine, the genius of man has so wrought upon steam, upon electricity and other forces of nature that not only have the products of the earth been vastly increased, but by means of rapid intercommunication all nations have been brought into close relations, one easily supplying what another lacks. Thus national famines have disappeared, or are disappearing, from the world, together with the ignorance that tolerated them.

So for pestilence. We claim, too, that disease and pestilence are not the rightful masters of man, and only tyrannize over him by reason of his ignorance or supineness. They are merely the humble subjects of nature, and come and go in obedience to her laws.

Accepting the estimate made by statisticians of the financial value of the life of each able-bodied, industrious man at sixteen hundred dollars, and the average cash value of each man, woman and adolescent above twelve years of age at one thousand dollars, we have then some slight conception of the financial value of the life of each citizen, and the loss to the wealth of the country from sickness and death from preventable diseases which destroy thousands of lives annually, the cash value of which amounts to millions. The eight thousand who die annually in Canada from tuberculosis alone represent a financial loss of at least eight million dollars. Even from this low monetary point of view, therefore, it needs no