OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY 1877. I. TRENTON, N. J.: NAAR, DAY & NAAR, PRINTERS 1877. REPORT OF THE CORRESPONDING SECRETARY. By the act establishing a State Board of Health for the State of New Jersey, it was made the duty of the board to make report to the Governor, in the month of December, of its investigations and opinions, with such suggestions as it might deem necessary. The act further specifies, "That the board shall take cognizance of the interests of health and life among the citizens of this State; they shall make sanitary investigations and inquiries in respect to the people, the causes of disease, and especially of epidemics, and the sources of mortality, and the effects of localities, employments, conditions and circumstances on the public health; and they shall gather such information in respect to these matters as they may deem proper for diffusion among the people; they shall also make inquiries and reports in reference to diseases affecting animals and the methods of prevention." In this, our initial report, it seems proper that we should first. make reference to some of the considerations which have led to the formation of this board. The recognition of a need that the State should conserve the welfare of the citizen for his health and for its protection, as well as in other regards, is no new theory. The idea seems so far to commend itself for an axiom, as to make it an inherent part of the protection of life to which the principles of common law entitle us. Indeed, it has almost been assumed that the law of self-preservation was so emphatic that no one needed to be guarded or instructed as to his own health, and that a trespass on the health of others was such a palpable infringement of personal rights as almost to work its own limitation. Although it was soon found that what ought to be by nature is not by practice, yet legislation was chiefly confined to the sudden invasion of epidemics, and to a dealing with the results rather than the causes of disease. A higher step was taken when the demand was made that |