furnaces was given. The result was as follows: A barrel of ordinary garbage, or slop, was burned in four minutes; a barrel of butchers' offal (bones and animal matter) was burned in seven minutes; a barrel of fluid night soil, thrown into the furnace with buckets, was almost instantly evaporated, and a barrel of solid fæces was burned in fifteen minutes. Convinced that this furnace had every requisite for fulfilling the design of destroying night soil and garbage, the Committee reported the result of the above experiments to the Council, and recommended the making of a contract for the building of such a furnace, capable of destroying daily sixty tons of night soil and garbage, and also for burning dead animals of all kinds which might die within the city limits, as well as the refuse matter from the butcher-shops. This furnace is to be constructed for using natural gas as a fuel. Of its success the writer maintains that there could be no doubt. The heating capacity of natural gas is more than four times greater than that of coal, which was used in destroying night soil in a boiling furnace in one and one-quarter hours. With artificial gas generated from fine slack, the night soil was burned in fifteen minutes. With natural gas better work could be done.

"Notwithstanding the great difficulty of destroying this substance by fire, there is in the use of natural gas, as a fuel, more risk of destroying the furnace than of not entirely consuming the night soil. It must not be understood, the writer continued, that this furnace can only be used in cities and towns where natural gas has been introduced as a fuel. Mr. Smith has gas generators built with his furnace in cities where there is no natural gas, and claims that he can produce a heat of greater intensity and with more economy than by any other method or from any other source outside of natural gas, and as cheap as natural gas can be supplied by a private company. The fine coal or slack is not the only substance from which artificial gas can be generated. Tan-bark, peat, and many other substances can be used. Mr. Smith's faith in the success of the furnace is so strong that he has agreed with the Wheeling corporation to ask no compensation until, by a series of successful experiments, he has shown its capacity to destroy all substances proper to be offered as tests of its powers.

"In reply to a question, Dr. Reeves stated that the cost of the furnace does not exceed $2,500."

The furnace which was building by Mr. Smith has recently been completed, and I am under obligations to Dr. Baird for information received at an early date regarding the results of the preliminary

testing of the furnace. The first test was deemed very satisfactory, and consisted in the destruction of the carcass of a horse in one hour. A peck measure, it was said, would have held all that remained of the bones and from these the animal matter was completely burned out. An enclosed newspaper clipping gave the results of the second test, as follows:

"The second test of the power of the Wheeling crematory furnace took place yesterday and was an unqualified success, fully sustaining the high opinions formed by M. V. Smith, its builder and inventor. The bad road prevented the securing of more than twenty barrels of night soil, and this was almost entirely the contents of dry vaults, being mixed with ashes, cinders, clay and other debris. It was fully one o'clock before the work of charging the furnace with the contents of the barrels and a quantity of miscellaneous offal was begun, and nearly two o'clock before it was finished.

"The gas was then turned on, and in a few moments all the volatile matter was decomposed by the intense heat and driven off in the form of vapor and gas, leaving the earthy matters and cinders as a residuum. Much of this stuff, having already been passed through fire, would not burn, but the steady application of heat to the mass soon reduced it to the consistency of tar, it much resembling an impure article of glass or furnace slag, having about it no sign or symptom of impurity.

"The nature of the stuff used made the test very severe, but highly satisfactory. There was little or no smoke and no odor except from the stuff spilled on the outside from the imperfect mode of charging the furnace."

Last year an appropriation was made by the city of Toronto, Canada, for the purpose of building several garbage furnaces, and Montreal has a furnace for the destruction of night soil which has been in operation since the summer of 1885.

Public and municipal attention is turning to the favorable results which have accompanied garbage cremation in England, and it is safe to predict that in the immediate future there will be a much larger number of examples in this country to which we can point, as illustrating this system of dealing with the garbage question. This method seems particularly applicable to the needs of our summer resorts, whether consisting of a single hotel or of a considerable town, as in the case of Bar Harbor or Old Orchard, and, both in the interest of public health and as a matter of business, it would undoubtedly pay some of these places to examine this question.

Third Annual Meeting of the National Confer

ence of State Boards of Health.

BY E. C. JORDAN, C. E.

As delegate to the National Conference of State Boards of Health, I beg leave to submit the following report of such parts of the proceedings as, it is thought, may be of public interest in our State:

The third annual meeting of the Conference was held in the parlors of the Queen's Hotel, Toronto, Ont., October 4, 1886. The meeting was called to order by Dr. G. P. Conn, Secretary. The President, Dr J. N. McCormack, not being present, Dr. H. B. Baker, of Michigan, was chosen pro tem.

After the minutes of the last meeting were read and accepted, Dr. William Oldright, chairman of the local sub-committee, was introduced and in a very happy manner welcomed the members to the city.

At this opening session, upon calling the roll of the States, there were delegates from twenty-one of the States who answered, and also from the District of Columbia, Dominion of Canada and the Provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.

The first paper presented to the Conference was "A Comparative View of Sanitary Laws, and what Changes are Needed in those of Maine," by the Secretary of the State Board of Health of Maine. In the absence of Dr. Young, it was read by your delegate, and will be found in full in other pages of the second annual report. A brief discussion followed the reading of the paper and a committee consisting of Dr. A. G. Young, of Maine, Dr. H. B. Baker, of Michigan, and Dr. William Oldright, of Toronto, was appointed to report a codification of the health laws of the several States and Provinces at the next meeting of the Conference. (180)

The following resolutions were then taken up:

From Pennsylvania—

"What precautions should be taken to prevent the bodies of deceased persons from becoming a source of injury to the public health during transportation on lines of public travel?"

From Michigan

"1. Resolved, That the bodies of persons dead from the followingnamed diseases should not be transported outside the jurisdiction of the health authorities in which the deaths occur: Diphtheria, scarlet fever, small-pox, cholera, yellow fever and typhus fever.

"2. Resolved, That persons sick with diphtheria, scarlet fever, small-pox, cholera, yellow fever, typhus fever, measles or whooping cough should not be transported outside the jurisdiction of the health authorities in which the sickness occurs.

"3. Resolved, That the bodies of persons dead from diseases other than those mentioned in Resolution No. 1 should not be transported except by the permission of the health officer of the locality in which the deaths occur; and in case of communicable diseases other than those named in Resolution No. 1, notice should be given to, and whenever practicable permission should be received from, the health officer of the locality to which it is desired to take the body.

"4. Resolved, That a permit for the removal of a dead body should be given only on assurance of its having been properly embalmed, suitably prepared, by being surrounded with disinfectants, or enclosed in a hermetically sealed metallic case.”"

The following are extracts from the remarks of Dr. Benj. Lee, Secretary of the State Board of Health of Pennsylvania:

"Very soon after the establishment of our State Board of Health, I was waited upon by a lawyer from one of the towns in the interior of the State to know whether the board would sanction the exhumation and removal of the body of a man who had died of small-pox. The local board of health had forbidden the exhumation, but the widow was extremely anxious for the removal, and he had come on her behalf to inquire whether we could not reverse their decision. I replied that the object of the State board in its relation to local boards would always be to uphold them in all their efforts to protect the public against infectious diseases, and not to weaken. their authority, and that in this instance we should certainly deem it our duty to sustain their ruling. I subsequently learned the his

tory of this case and felt happy in having decided as I had done. It appeared that the deceased was a lawyer of some prominence who was thoroughly imbued with the anti-vaccination heresy. In public and in private, on the street, in the social circle and through the public press, all his efforts were concentrated, both by denunciation and ridicule, to the end of discouraging his fellow citizens from subjecting themselves or their children to this operation. Finally he was taken sick and his physician announced to him that he had small-pox. The case proved to be confluent, of the worst type, and he died in great agony. Fortunately his reason was spared him long enough to enable him to understand and repent of his long course of crime. Who knows how many lives he may have indirectly sacrificed by his wicked presumption before he committed suicide himself? And it was this horribly infected body of a man who had spent his best energies in exposing his fellow beings to infection, which his widow now wished, in order to gratify a mere sickly sentimentality, to render a new center of contagion, and thus add still other victims to his list. I was thus deeply impressed with the importance of placing this matter under strict control; but I felt that unless other States were willing to co-operate, but little could be accomplished for the protection of the people of my own. It was with this object in view that I requested the Secretary of the Conference to give the subject a place on the programme for discussion.

"The plan authorized by the Board of Health of the city of Philadelphia commends itself at once as being effective and inexpensive. The coffin, of whatever kind, unless it be an absolutely secure metallic coffin or casket, is placed in a tight wooden box lined with felt, which has been recently smeared with pitch. The cover of this box is provided with a flange near the edge which sits in a groove on the edges of the box. This groove contains a strip of India rubber. When the cover is screwed tightly down upon this rubber strip the box is sealed as hermetically as a preserve jar. The object in framing all regulations of this kind should be to protect the public health with the least possible interference with private rights and the least possible involvement of expense. I cannot but regard the absolute prohibition of the disinterment or transportation of the bodies of those who have died of the first four named intensely infectious and malignant diseases as eminently wise. When I remember that I have held in my hand a grain of wheat taken from an Egyptian mummy, three thousand years old, and that a similar grain.