only fifteen years, roused the whole nation to ask, "Why?" and "Can nothing be done to remedy it?" Chadwick was a barrister of the Inner Temple when, in 1828, a trifling incident turned his attention from the law to the subject of vital statistics, of which few worthy of the name were in existence. An able article from his pen, on What might be done to Improve the Taking of Vital Statistics, at once drew the attention of the country to him, and pointed him out as a man of unique sagacity in "extracting from masses of details the master facts, and bringing these to bear for the elucidation of a master thought." Parliament at once made use of his remarkable abilities, and, beginning with finding out the worst that could be known, inaugurated measures, largely under his guidance, for the amelioration of evils, till to-day, they and we, live in a different world. Most worthily was he knighted by the Queen, and when he died was universally recognized as the father of sanitation. One of his earliest measures was the framing of an act to procure an accurate registration of births, marriages, and deaths; and Sir John Simon says: "Before that time a perfect chaos respecting the population and mortality reigned. Since that time a mass of statistics relative to life, health, and disease has been accumulating which will exert, and is exerting, an immensely beneficial influence upon the physical and moral welfare of these realms (England and Wales), and indeed, ultimately, on every people on the face of the globe. The discoveries in astronomy have not a more palpable application to navigation and commerce, or the investigations of chemistry to manufactures, than have the statistics of health and disease to moral regeneration." But it was Chadwick's report of 1844 that waked up a slumbering nation. Fifty years after, the death rate in the whole country had been cut down from thirty-two to eighteen in the thousand. The work going on there did not escape the eyes of progressive men here. Another layman, Lemuel Shattuck, of Boston, watched the matter in its every step of development, and being touched with the same fine "enthusiasm for humanity" as Chadwick, by voice and pen strove to kindle an answering flame at home. Largely through his influence, the Legislature of Massachusetts passed an act in 1849 by which the Governor was to appoint three commissioners who were to report and prepare a plan for a sanitary survey of the State, etc. They were to be paid, for the time actually spent in the discharge of their duty, the same compensation as members of the General Court, and for travel, and could spend fifty dollars for books, which were to belong to the State Library when they were done with them, but on no account were the expenses of the commission to exceed five hundred dollars!
The Governor appointed Lemuel Shattuck, N. P. Banks, and
