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department. To their desire to conceal nothing, and to their unfailing courtesy in furnishing all possible information, is due whatever merit these pages may possess. For it is not from books, but only by accompanying the different inspectors on their daily rounds of duty and coming in personal touch with their chiefs, that a layman, not officially connected with the department, can hope to derive anything of real value.
I. ORGANIZATION. 1
As at present organized, the Health Department of New York city seems to be a model of efficiency and smooth running. Doubtless this is due more than anything else to the ability of the present commissioner and his assistants, and certainly one must be very careful not to lay undue stress on the forms rather than the methods of administration. Nevertheless, a knowledge of just how the department is organized is necessary to a clear understanding of its working ; and it should also prove interest- ing and helpful in judging of the comparative merits of the vari- ous forms of organization in some of our other large cities.
In 1866 the general sanitary condition of New York had grown so appallingly bad that doing the year no less than 33 persons died out of every 1,000. Public opinion became thoroughly aroused. A Brooklyn Board of Health had been established as early as 1824, and with apparently good results, and New York's citizens resolved to lag behind no longer. In consequence, the Board of Health of the old city of New York was established, and since that time has remained practically unchanged until the Greater city was created by the Consolidation Act of 1897.
As organized under the present charter, 2 the Board of Health is the head of the Department of Health, and is composed of the commissioner of health, the commissioner of police, and the health officer of the port. The commissioner of health is the executive head of the department and president of the board, and, like the police commissioner, is appointed by the mayor, at an annual salary of $7,500, and removable at his pleasure. The board appoints most of the other officers and agents, nine-tenths
'See table opposite. "Charter of 1901, chap. xix.
