STATE BOARD OF HEALTH.
On motion by Mr. VAN VORHIS his bill [S. 93] to establish a State Board of Health, and prescribing a system of registration (see these Reports, pages 83, 84, 85 and 111), was taken up, with a Comnmittee report thereon, recommending its passage with amendments; reducing the number of the Board from seven to five member, reducing the pay of Secretary from $1,500 to $1,200, and striking out the requirement that each County shall furnish an officer for the oard, etc., etc.
Mr. VAN VORHIS said:
In offering this bill to the Senate I have been prompted by an earnest and intense conviction not only of the advisability, but of the paramount necessity for the enactment by this General Assembly of a law establishing a State Board of Health. And if at the end of this session I shall not have given my best effort to secure the passage of such an act by pointing out to Senators the necessity for it, I shall feel that I have but poorly executed the trust confided to me in common with other Senators on this floor. And as the importance of this measure is borne in upon me, I feel most keenly my want of ability to present it in a way at all commensurate with the importance of the subject in a way demanded by the interests of this great Commonwealth.
It is the duty of a government the people themselves have formed--legislative, judicial and executive--to so enact, judge and execute laws that greatest good of the people may be subserved.
But the responsibility resting upon us is far greater than that upon either of the other departments of the State Government. The one interprets, the other executes; but upon us is the responsibility of declaring the will of the people.
Coming as we do directly from the people, bearing credentials evidencing the confidence of our several constituencies, their interests press heavily upon us, and our duty is not to be lightly considered or carelessly performed.
Now, sir, if I have been able to comprehend the interests confided to us they may be divided into two classes--
1. Those interests pertaining to the lives and the health of the citizens of the State.
2. Those interests connected with and growing out of their material possessions.
These two classes of interests are often most intimately connected, and, yet, I take it, the distinctions easily made.
It will require no argument, I apprehend, to convince any intelligent man that those interests pertaining to life and health are of first and highest importance to the people of the State. Individually this is true, and it is no less true when the entire citizenship of the State is considered.
The valuation placed upon life increases with the advance of civilization, and this State common with all the States of the Union and with all civilized nations of the world, has given evidence of the high value it places upon human life by inflicting a terrible penalty upon anyone who, without legal excuse, shall take life.
There are few laws upon our statute books looking to the preservation of public health, and what there are are of little value for the want of a proper department, charged with the duty to, and supplied with the necessary legal machinery for, enforcing them.
Almost the entire law for the preservation of the public health is comprised in the following:
An act forbidding the importation of Texas cattle during certain seasons, as having certain diseases.
An act prescribing how hogs dying of "hog cholera" shall be disposed of, and prescribing a penalty for a violation of it.
page: 200[View Page 200]An act to prevent sheep afflicted with certain contagious diseases from running at large.
An act to prevent the throwing of carrion into a running stream, etc.
An act to prevent feeding coculus indicus to fish in streams.
A act to prevent sale of unwholesome food.
An act to prevent the adulteration of intoxicating liquors.
An act to prevent, the admixture of poisons with food.
An act forbidding the employment of males or females under sixteen years old in cotton or woolen mills for more than ten hours each day.
The nuisance laws contain a provision for the suppression of whatever is injurious to health.
These laws are referred to in an address of the President of the Indiana State Medical Society, pages three and four, a copy of which was several days ago placed upon the tables of each Member of the Senate.
I am sure I do not make a mistake when I assume that not a Senator who hears me to-day but will gladly give his vote for any bill, whether it appropriates $5,000 or inore of the money from the Treasury of the State, if he believes that such a bill, by becoming a law, will save one human life that would otherwise be needlessly sacrificed. More than this: I am confident, if it could be clearly shown, that the appropriation of $5,000 would prevent--nay, if it would give but reasonable assurance of preventing an epidemic in any part of this State that would endanger the lives of any of its eitizens, the money would be appropriated without a dissenting vote.
You would do it as humanitarians, and I do not believe you would stop to inquire what would be the money value of a human life to the State, or would spend a moment's time in considering what the loss of time occasioned by the sickness cousequent upon an epidemic would be worth in dollars and cents.
I believe if you saw that a life could be saved, or suffering prevented, or had a reasonable assurance that such would be the result, upon a proposition looking to that end, you would answer "aye" as your names were called.
But, sir, leaving out entirely in the consideration of this subject all humanitarian ideas, and without one reference to the benevolent spirit of the time, and without one single appeal to the sympathies of the human heart, and see the whole subject be stripped of everything that appeals to our higher and better motives--leaving nothing but the sordid skeleton of man and interest and there is still sufficient upon which to base an unanswerable argument in favor of the purposes intended to be accomplishd by the provisions of this bill.
Human life has a money value and so has physical health.
It is against the feelings of my better nature to consider the subject from this point of view. It almost makes one shudder to think of examining a human life with the icy coolness of business shrewdness and calculation, and measuring human suffering by the heartless standard of profit and loss, that we may determine whether, in dollars and cents, it will pay to save the one or prevent the other.
But, sir, it is a matter of financial interest to the State whether her citizens live or die. It is a matter of the gravest business concern whether they are sick or well.
Disease is a calamity to the State as well as to the individual, and Professor Waterman, to whose address I have before referred, has well said that "disease, considered only from a financial point of view, is one of the most expensive and wasteful directions in which imperfectly organized society is taxed for its carelessness and ignorance."
I imagine that one who has not examined this subject will be startled at the results of calculations, and may be incredulous until he has given the subject careful attention. But when such attention has been given, the earnestness and even enthusiasm of those who are impressed with the approximate accuracy of the results will cease to be a cause of wonder.
To give you an idea of the losses to society by sickness and death--before attempting to show you approximately the loss entailed upon Indiana every year by preventable diseases and avoidable deaths--I desire to read some extracts from the address of Professor Waterman. [Reads from Waterman's address, page five, etc.] Now, sir, it is a fact that I do not think will be questioned by any one laying claim to even a moderate amount of information concerning the subject, that every year a large number of lives are lost and much time consumed--to say nothing of expenses entailed--by diseases known to be preventable. To those who have not though of this subject to any extent, if there are any such among th Senators, I refer to a few extracts from a paper in the Report of the Bureau of Statistics for the year 1879, [Reads from pages 467, 468, 470, and from the report of the State Board of Health of Connecticut, page nine.]
In this connection I desire to show approximately the loss to this State by this class of diseases. Making the calculation upon a basis recognized by scientific men the world over, and according to an estimate concerning death and sickness in Indiana considered entirely safe, and certainly much below what would be indicated by the reports of medical gentlmen, extracts from the which reports I have just read.
From all the available statistics the death rate in Indiana can safely be counted at twenty per thousand. Now experience and statistics show that by a proper system of sanitary regulation the death rate can be reduced to fifteen per thousand. In other words, in Indiana 25 per cent. are the result of preventable diseases. The population of the State is in round numbers about 2,000,000, of which about 40,000 die annually. At least 10,000 of these deaths are the result of preventable diseases.
Now, estimate each life to be worth $500 to the State, one-half the amount estimated to be the value of a United States soldier, and $120 less than the estimate made by the Superintedent of the Statistical Departmentn of the Register General's office in England, and the total loss to the State would be $5,000,000 annually.
Now, suppose the persons thus dying, are not short of the average expentancy of life five years, a very low estimate indeed, and you will have a loss of 50,000 years' labor. Counting the labor worth $50 a year and the loss in labor to the State will be $2,500,000.
According to the estimae made in England, based upon their statistics, there are enough sick to make an average of 730 days of sickness, counting those who die and those who are sick that to not die to each death.
If this calculation be restricted to the 10,000 supposed to be preventable deaths in Indiana and reducing the English average number of days of sickness from 730 to 400, so as to be absolutely safe in the calculation, and it shows 4,000,000 days of sickness that should be prevented. If the loss of time and expense on account of sickness be counted according to the Massachusetts estimate of $2 per day, it will show a loss to the State on account of preventable sickness alone, of $8,000,000.
