The available figures and facts, Dr. Bryce said, apart from experience in handling smallpox, scarlet fever, and diphtheria, in this Province seemed to settle effectually any question of the necessity for dealing with a serious epidemic disease in a thorough manner, and made it apparent that medical health officers must be empowered, as in smallpox, to provide means for separating cases of scarlet fever from their families.

After reassembly on Friday at 10.30 a.m., the board went into committee of the whole on two bills, which were to be brought before the Legislature, then in session. The first was Mr. Kribs' bill to do away with compulsory vaccination.

It was decided to furnish all useful. information on the subject to the Provincial Secretary.

Dr. Pyne's bill to amend the Public Health Act was next taken up. The bill provides, first, that all meat, animals, poultry, game, flesh, fish, fruit and vegetables brought into a municipality shall be taken to such places for inspection as the Local Board of Health may deem necessary, and that persons selling such food shall have it inspected.

Dr. Bryce said the present Act provided for the inspection of animals without the unnecessary trouble to the farmers of bringing them to any special place. The inspection of fish and vegetables could not be carried out. The board was persuaded that such a measure would not pass the Legislature, because of its impracticability.

Another clause of Dr. Pyne's bill would give power to the medical health officer, or his inspector, to enter lodging-houses, tenement-houses, or laundries, in the municipality, at any hour of the day or night, in order to ascertain the number of occupants of such places, and whether each inmate was or was not provided with 500 cubic feet of air space. The board was of opinion that places such as those mentioned in this clause of the bill should be licensed and registered, and that their fitness for the purpose intended should be ascertained at the time when an application for a license was made. This is the system which is carried into effect in England under the Lodging-house Act.

In the afternoon the board granted the application of Ottawa East to discharge sewage into the Rideau River, just above its junction with the Ottawa River. Tiverton was allowed to extend its cemetery and to drain the same into a stream at a point lower down than an adjoining farm.

Dr. Cassidy read a report of the Committee on Epidemics, explanatory of the much-complained-of mandatory powers of the medical health officer mentioned in Clause 5 of the scarlet fever regulations. It is as follows:

REPORT OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON EPIDEMICS.

Your Committee on Epidemics, in order to render clear the bearing of the scarlet fever regulations, which became an orderin-Council on March 5th, 1903, begs leave to report that the regulations are only intended to make the operation of the Public Health Act definite and clear in several particulars, which have been hitherto somewhat imperfectly understood.

These several particular points are:

1. That the medical health officer has clearly been placed in a position to carry out the Act relating to scarlet fever, and is required to report to the Provincial Board of Health failure to supply facilities therefor on the part of local boards of health.

2. That the medical health officer, and not the attending physician, nor the local board of health, is placed definitely in a position to determine the character of the isolation of cases as called for by the Act.

3. That he is empowered to isolate patients for a definite period of six weeks, or longer, if the circumstances require it.

4. That the isolation to be provided is that defined under Section 106 of the Statutes, which has existed for twenty years in the Act, and which states that local boards of health must provide a temporary hospital for contagious diseases.

5. That the regulations provide that greater stringency in the matter of the isolation of patients be insisted upon on the part of the medical health officer.

6. That while the medical health officer is required under the regulations to utilize such hospital accommodation as is provided under the Act, he is, at the same time, allowed under the statute to use his judgment in the exercise of such power.

7. That in order that any misconception as to the meaning of the regulations may be removed from the minds of the public, and of the medical health officers, your Committee would recommend that in the printed copy of the regulations issued by the board the following foot-note be inserted:

"It was not the intention of the Provincial Board of Health, in framing the regulations, to, in any way, limit the discretionary powers given the medical health officer under the Public Health Act, in Section 93, R.S.O."

8.-Your Committee would also invite earnest attention to the fact that efficient isolation, as facilitated by ample hospital accommodation, has materially lessened the death and sickness rates and effected immense savings in many ways. The statistics given by the Secretary in his last quarterly report admirably show this, and also show the great advances made in other countries in providing the municipal accommodation for which we are now striving:

9.-Your Committee would like that the opposite side of the

question should be presented to the public; the obligation of the body politic to provide facilities, so that the wage-earners may be allowed to carry on their work, without endangering the lives and health of other wage-earners.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

The report was received and adopted.*

J. J. CASSIDY.

WM. OLDRIGHT.
P. H. BRYCE.

Dr. Cassidy also read an interim report of the Committee on Epidemics, respecting the hygiene of barber shops, stating that a final report of the Committee would be made on this subject at the next quarterly meeting.

The plan for providing water works for East Ottawa was approved of.

The following standing committees were appointed for the

year:

Epidemics-Drs. Cassidy, Oldright and Bryce.
Water Supply-Drs. Douglas, Vaux and Bryce.
Sewerage Drs. Kitchen, Bryce and Oldright.

School Hygiene and Ventilation-Drs. Cassidy, Oldright and Bryce.

sidy.

Legislation and Publication-Drs. Bryce, Douglas and Cas

Foods and Drinks-Drs. Vaux, Kitchen and Bryce.

It was intimated by the Secretary that the next meeting of the board would probably be held at Peterboro' early in September next, at which place and time the meeting of the Association of Medical Health Officers would also be held.

The board then adjourned.

A New Building for Messrs. Howards & Sons.-Messrs.. Howards & Sons, the well-known pharmaceutical house of Stratford (London), are erecting new works at Ilford in Essex, where they have acquired some thirty-three acres of land with excellent river and railway accommodation. They have already built a factory for their branch house, Messrs. Hopkins & Williams, of Hatton Garden, London, E.C., which is thoroughly up to date and fitted up with all the latest apparatus for the scientific preparation of all kinds of pharmaceutical, photographic and fine chemicals. Two new partners, Messrs. Geoffrey Eliot Howard and Bernard Farmborough Howard were admitted in 1902 to the firm, which still upholds the sound old principle that all work of whatever description should be carried on under the close personal supervision of the partners themselves. No market in the world is prized more. highly by Howards & Sons than Canada, of whose men of business courtesy and loyalty are such strong characteristics.

The Canadian

Journal of Medicine and Surgery

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TORONTO, JULY, 1903.

Editorials.

VACCINATION AND SOME OF ITS SHORTCOMINGS.

THAT vaccination is the principal and all-important protective against smallpox may be said to be a truism. In fact, no person, whose opinion on health matters is worthy of the slightest consideration, holds the contrary opinion.

Cleanliness, sanitation and isolation are likewise excellent preventives. Unfortunately, however, for the gospel of cleanliness and sanitation, their very best exponents catch smallpox as readily

as the dirtiest inhabitants of the slums, if they are not protected by vaccination or a previous attack of smallpox. The practice of isolating a smallpox patient is excellent; but the attendants, if not inmune, will catch the disease. Besides the isolation of an unprotected population without vaccination would be prohibitive, on account of the expense.

To limit the spread of smallpox in a populous centre no means is so effective as general vaccination. Another reason why people. should be rendered immune to smallpox by vaccination is, that this disease is contagious before the eruptive disease has appeared, when the infected person is not an object of suspicion. It has been conveyed to unprotected persons by infected persons, who presented no skin lesions at all. If smallpox has been known to exist, and a patient has been exposed, and has the other symptoms of the disease, even though the eruption has not appeared, it is of the first importance that all unprotected persons should be vaccinated, segregated and kept under close observation until the period of twenty-one days is passed, when the danger may be considered

as over.

As the members of the Provincial Board of Health have expressed strong opinions in favor of the vaccination of infants and school children, together with the vaccination of non-immunes, who have been recently exposed to smallpox, it is only fair that, as far as they can, they should see that vaccination is properly carried out. The reasoning in favor of the necessity of vaccination is beyond cavil, but the impurity of vaccine, the careless and even reprehensible manner in which the operation is sometimes done, and the neglect of obvious precautions to keep the vaccination wound clean give cause for alarm and oftentimes produce actual disease.

In regard to the first point, no vaccine should be put on the market until it has been tested on mice or guinea-pigs, and proved to be free from the agent of tetanus. If the boiled gelatine made from calves' feet can transmit tetanus by hypodermic injection, may not the Nicolaier germ be also mixed with vaccine pulp taken from a calf's abdomen? (Vide editorial note at p. 52.) We do not say that it is frequently present in vaccine, but contend that it is the duty of the manufacturer to look for it, and prove that it is not present in his product before he sells it. A vaccinator should be able to say: "This vaccine, which I am using is free