GENERAL REPORT.

Many years ago STERNE said beautifully and no less truly than beautifully:

"Oh, thou blessed health! Thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul and openest all its powers to receive instruction and relish virtue. He that hath thee hath little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee."

More recently PARKES, one of the most eminent sanitarians of England, said:

"It has been proved over and over again, that nothing is so costly in all ways as disease, and that nothing is so remunerative as the outlay which augments health, and, in doing so, augments the amount and value of the work done."

To secure and to preserve this blessed health, and to prevent disease are the objects of the creation of health boards, and of all health laws.

Since 1880, Iowa has been in line with other States, then comparatively few in number, in this benificent work of caring for the lives and health of the people. It is safe to say that no sentiment has grown so rapidly, and become so firmly implanted in the convictions of the people; and laws and provisions for the attainment of no other object have been accorded so generous an acquiescence, as those pertaining to the general health. This is not strange. Indeed, it would be passing strange if it were otherwise.

Nothing is quite so expensive as sickness and death; nothing leaves so little to live for as the removal by death of the loved ones of our homes, especially if such removal was by a disease, or accident, easily preventable. The object of all health legislation is to ascertain the nature and causes of disease; to distinguish those that are preventable, and the best methods of such prevention; to protect by quarantine and other recognized efficient means the

General Report.

susceptible and unprotected from wanton and reckless exposure; and to instruct the people upon all phases of sanitary work.

Preventive medicine and sanitary science may be likened into a gigantic tree, whose roots are strong and vigorous; whose branches, though of comparatively rapid growth, are for all time; and whose leaves and fruit are not so much for the healing of the nations, as for the preservation of the health and promotion of the happiness of all mankind!

The sentiment of all sanitarians, and of all health laws is: "PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE." Dr. W. S. Robertson, one of the most eminent sanitarians of the State, and the honored president of the Iowa State Board of Health from its organization to the time of his death, in an appeal to the legislature for additional health legislation said: "Your State Board of Health asks not of you the enactment of laws which so often thrill the body politic by the possession of place, patronage and power, but simply that you enable it still further to engage in the PATERNAL work of saving the lives and promoting the health of the people of Iowa. * * * The motives for the needed work are the highest of man's best nature, since the greatest good of the greatest number of people' is all that is asked."

A reference to the special part of this report will give some idea of the wide range of subjects that have been under consideration by the Board during the last biennial period.

Since my last report many important discoveries, the result of conscientious and enthusiastic, though very pains-taking investigation, have been made in the domain of preventive medicine. These discoveries, and their practical advantages, have been noticed from time to time in the MONTHLY BULLETIN-the official organ of the Board. Perhaps one of the most important, is the settled conviction, the result of repeated experiments, and of extended observation, amounting to positive demonstration, that Consumption, the most fatal, and the most widely diffused of all diseases afflicting the human family, is the result of infection-caused by a special microbe or bacillus, and hence a purely preventable disease. Attention is especially called to this part of the report.