effect to this section of the law that the persons, corporations and invested capital which are responsible for evils which many share in causing, and which thousands of people share in suffering, shall become enlisted in controlling and suppressing them. The twelve petroleum refining corporations, while daily refining upward of 1,200,000 gallons and producing in that process upward of forty-five tons of sludge or spent-acid, adopted the necessary means for controlling and preventing all their causes of nuisance, and in their written guaranty they "do promise and agree that hereafter the said refiners and each of them will prevent the open exposure of spent-acid, the product of refineries, at any place within fifteen miles of any city in the State of New York during the warm season, and eight miles from any such city during the cold season; and that neither said spent acid nor any other offensive material, shall be permitted to flow, leak or waste into or upon the ground or streams, * and that whatever * * * shall be used at or by said refineries as fuel shall be so perfectly consumed that thereby no hurtful or offensive smoke or stenches shall be produced. * * "" * This engagement has been adhered to with the utmost fidelity. The Board places this testimony on record to illustrate a method of enlisting the best resources of great industries in procuring compliance with sanitary laws and regulations. * * The director of the most extensive of the superphosphate fertilizer factories, whose premises in Queens county were near the Murray Hill district of New York, wrote, after receiving the Governor's orders, "we concur entirely with your committee, that whatever cannot be controlled by available means should be removed to a reasonable and proper distance from the populous district."" The adoption of this view of public and personal duty, as regards widely spread stench nuisances, has at last procured the removal of not only the worst source of effluvium nuisance that failed to be controlled, but it has come to be accepted as a correct basis for law to repress and prevent such evils. None can dispute the claim that all people are entitled to pure air; and this is what the protracted inquiry and difficult task of this Board in the stench-producing region of Hunter's Point has signified. It is creditable to the managers of the vast industries which caused offenses that the final instructions by the Governor have been so intelligently and heartily responded to. Although the task of controlling and cleansing is not yet completed, the eighth section of the organic law of the Board is producing good results, and it works no serious hardship to any legitimate trade or business. It is found adapted to secure the abatement and prevention of great evils that have obstinately resisted. local authorities. The Three counties act" (chap. 415 of 1851) applied only to New York, Queens and Westchester counties, and it has presented so many difficulties, even in the simplest cases brought before the courts in those counties, and is attended by so much cost and vexation to individuals who bring action, that it has remained practically a dead letter, excepting in one or two instances. The Executive instructions and summary orders which the eighth section of the State Board act provided for, tend to prevent litigation, and to secure genuine respect for sanitary conclusions and orders. The fact that parties who are pecuniarily interested in the perpetuation of an evil, may embarrass the proceedings for compliance with the Governor's orders and instructions, by obtaining injunctions, or setting up counter-actions against the party whose duty it is to comply, may not in general diminish the practical value of this law. LAWS AND SANITARY PROVISIONS RELATING TO SMALL-POX AND VACCINATION. As it is a traditional law of the human family that, as regards the small-pox contagion, "the public safety is supreme law," there is no exception to the universal, arbitrary and often rude application of this instinctive rule of self-preservation. Repulsive, terrifying and destructive as small-pox is, there still prevails a kind of reckless fatalism which stupidly waits for the introduction of the deadly contagion before the one great means for prevention is resorted to. Local health boards report that the people wait for a panic from this disease before they will seek protection by vaccination. The experience of the State Board, however, during the past year goes to show that by providing certain essential aids to physicians and the local boards of health, and supporting their efforts to secure the proper vaccination of all who are unprotected from small-pox, the indifference and objections to the protecting service of the vaccinator give way to a thankful appreciation of it. The kind of aid and support required, will need to offer information, plans, occasional guarantees for payment of vaccinal supplies, or, perhaps supply the pure virus gratuitously, and at all times to make the State Board a centre of information, advice and action for the perpetual suppression of small-pox. The Committee on Vital Statistics has submitted a statement that shows the Board has succeeded in laying a basis for the system here defined. It may be necessary to have the duty and authority of this Board more completely affirmed in the laws relating to this matter. The vaccination law of 1880 (chapter 438) was for the first put in action by advice issued to every town and school district last spring. That law is limited, in its operation to common schools. It is neces sary to reach every householder with the language of an obligatory law and regulation concerning vaccination, and at the same time to offer within proper limitations, the guaranties of pure vaccinal virus, and of gratuitous supplies of it for the poor and to meet sudden exigencies of local boards of health. Some details on this subject appear on a subsequent page. The terrible enemy to be disarmed and destroyed by sanitary organization and vaccination will stalk up and down through all communities that do not thus organize and act efficiently, and it should be remembered that until vaccination was discovered, the whole civilized world was in mortal dread, for as the great historian Macaulay, said of England, "small-pox was always present filling the churchyard with corpses and leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered and making the eyes and cheeks of the maiden objects of horror." Against an enemy and destroyer so dreaded no sane citizen should deny the right and duty of applying such obligatory laws as are necessary for the complete protection of the people. IMPURE WATER SUPPLIES; POLLUTION OF WELLS AND STREAMS; WATER ANALYSIS. The filth-soakage, which is known as a cause of fatal disease wherever it occurs in connection with wells or other sources of domestic water supply, is found to have all the importance that was attached to it in the Board's first report. House epidemics of diarrhoeal disease, and the typhoid fevers as reported to this Board seem to have resulted chiefly from this one filthy cause. The pollution of streams as well as of grounds that surround the nearer sources of domestic supplies of water has been carefully investigated in numerous places. The appended report upon chemical analysis of water-supplies unfolds the fact that in some instances the most positive defilement and unfitness of water was not revealed and explained so much by quantitative chemical analysis, as by the actual suffering of those who drank the polluted water, or by odors and minute kinds of proof of impurity. There is reason to suggest that there should be adequate resources of law at the command of sanitary authorities to prevent the pollution of streams, ponds and grounds about wells and springs, used for domestic or potable water-supply. dence of the necessity for definite legislation to prevent this cause of danger to public health is being arranged at the central office of this Board, while advice and the chemical analysis of suspected waters are offered to all local authorities who need such aid. Evi In a report from Engineer Egerton, which will be found appended in the papers on Sanitary Drainage and Topography, it is shown that the soakage from a butchery and swine-herd on the margin of the reservoir of a private water company, which is supplied from the Mohawk river, was an obvious source of impurity. The chemical analysis which was made of that reservoir water by Prof. Waller found only a small percentage of organic impurities; yet when heated to 100° Fahr. the water gave off offensive odors characteristic of the animal filth that defiled it. In like manner it appeared in the analysis of the water that killed nearly an entire family west of Ithaca last year, that the excremental pollution of the family well had more importance than any thing that was revealed in the chemical laboratories in which the water was carefully analyzed. This board while offering to every local board of health the resources of the best chemical laboratories for water-analysis, has no hesitation in advising that purity of source and surroundings of the water-supply for domestic use must be regarded as paramount to any thing that chemistry may be expected to reveal; and that in addition to being pure, the supply of such wholesome water should be in a sufficient quantity, and its source be carefully guarded against all causes of defilement. THE GENERAL DRAINAGE LAWS. As laws relating to drainage are co-incident with the history of civilized States and their legislation, New York has shared with other States the promiscuous kinds of law-making on this subject from almost the beginning of its organization as a Commonwealth; but in 1869, an act amendatory of the Revised Statutes relating to general drainage was adopted, with an obvious intention to secure the systematic drainage which certain portions of the State greatly need, and which each of those populous regions, namely, Seneca, Northern Cayuga, Onondaga, Wayne and portions of Monroe, Orleans, Niagara and Genesee counties, alike called for at that period. Portions of Orange, Richmond, Queens, Westchester and various other districts in the State required, and still require, the operation of such a comprehenSive and equitable general drainage law as shall be adapted to remove the general obstructions to the outflow from swamps and marsh-lands, to secure thorough drainage for health as well as for wealth. Such, undoubtedly, was the object in view by those who prepared and enacted the General Drainage Law of 1869 (chapter 888), and its amendments in subsequent years. In the practical operation of the law, and its amendments, grave difficulties and obstructions have arisen, which the legislature will need, sooner or later, to provide against. The fact that swamps, marshes, stagnant and fluctuating ponds, foul streams and wet lands, have an important causative relation to miasmatic diseases, and to certain maladies that are still more fatal, is admitted to be so true that in the interpretation of the General Drainage Law of 1869, the courts have held that unless the proposed drainage is necessary for the public health, the County Court does not acquire jurisdiction for the enforcement of that law. The condition under which the initial proceedings for drainage are taken under it, is, that "any person or persons who shall deem it necessary for the public health that any such swamp, bog, meadow, or other low or wet land shall be drained, may present a petition, duly verified, to the county judge, etc., etc." Though public economy and private advantage might justify an obligatory general law for drainage, the interests of public health are first in order, and they really are paramount. -- Faulty as this law now is, certain miasmatic districts have been greatly improved by its application, yet as mentioned in this Board's report a year ago, the drainage laws of the State are practically inoperative and have been the occasion for abuses which the legislature did not foresee. For this and various other reasons which will appear in the presentation of the special report, herewith submitted, showing what are the essential requirements in a general drainage act, the board now earnestly invites the attention of the Governor and legisla ture to the existing necessity for such a general statute as shall adequately provide, 1st. For thoroughness and efficiency in the service and plans that relate to the drainage of extensive areas of swamp and wet lands, in regard to which the State has a responsible concern, especially through all those districts in which the canal-feeders and their storage-lakes and ponds are situated. 2d. That every county, town, village and city shall be authorized and enabled by statutory provisions, to devise and proceed with such general drainage, as the judgment of local Boards of Health in the districts concerned, confirmed by the State Board of Health, shall advise. And that the plans for such drainage, whenever they extend beyond the limits of an incorporated village, township, or city, shall be approved by the State Engineer and the State Board of Health. Perhaps it is not practicable for any State authority to interfere with the preference of tax-paying citizens for the purpose of obtaining for them the sanitary drainage necessary for the protection of health and life in their families, yet there have been brought to the attention of this Board certain instances of great public necessity for sanitary drainage which ought not to be delayed for another year; but in certain communities that are so unsettled in their local judgments and action, whole neighborhoods would take the chance of sickness half |