and drugs are exposed, health resorts, prisons, hospitals, and public buildings are inspected, the poor are provided with sanitary homes—in short, the people are watched over and defended from the cradle to the grave. The steady lengthening of human life shows that their intelligent efforts are not wasted. The annual reports are an incomparable means of mutual education, for no new method of investigation or illustration appears in one that is not availed of by the others. The mere titles of the different topics to which study has been directed would fill several pages of this magazine.
The last query was, "By what methods does it promote sanitary and hygienic reforms?" The comprehensive reply deduced from the thirty-seven letters is "the education of the people" through reports, circulars, pamphlets, and leaflets, accompanied by most ingenious and instructive maps, charts, and graphic diagrams. While one of the most potent means of convincing and moving men is the human voice, with a clear brain, an enthusiastic soul, and a worthy cause behind it, the most lasting and universal is a judicious diffusion of printer's ink. Most of the boards keep on hand, circulars, giving plain directions how to care for and limit the spread of contagious diseases—a work made easier since bacteriology became the definite science that it now is. In one sanitary convention complaint was made that these tracts in large numbers remained piled up in the offices of the board. But there comes a moment when they achieve their destiny. Let a case of scarlatina break out, as soon as the telegraph can order, and the mail bring these documents, people are conning them for a way of escape, and that locality will never again be as densely ignorant as it was. The State of Pennsylvania sends out twenty-three different ones, and some of them printed in many tongues, for the benefit of her polyglot people; and there are few of the States that have not established similar fountains to send forth a fertilizing irrigation of knowledge. In the States of Michigan and Pennsylvania conventions held in localities that need them have been found of the greatest value. The first holds four a year, and already forty-eight separate localities have experienced this quickening visitation. In Ohio the State Board holds joint conventions now with the school teachers, and again with the "funeral directors." The Maine Board prints a monthly journal, and sends it to school teachers, clergymen, and heads of local boards. Maryland tries to send tracts to every family. In the larger and more sparsely settled western States the central board gets into very close and vital relations with local boards, and as a consequence two States, Tennessee and Indiana, report, "We no longer have epidemics of diphtheria, since we have learned to limit and counteract it." In Minnesota sixteen hundred and thirty local boards
