THE PUBLIC HEALTH.
I have been requested by the State Health Commission to draw your attention to the importance of constituting a State Board of Health , to be aided by local Boards, and empowered to investigate the causes of diseases in the different localities , and to enforce legislation on the subject. A communication made to your predecessors was accompanied by such detailed information as to make the repetition of it unnecessary. The Bureau of Statistics has been the medium of a publication of "Vital Statistics and Sanitary Reports" furnished by the Commission. It remains for you to supplement the labors of the Bureau with professional investigation and recommendations, and grant necessary police powers properly guarded. Twenty-three States already have such Boards. A basis for your consideration of the subject will be afforded by a bill for an act already prepared for introduction.
The Board of Health of Louisiana was reorganized by act of April 20, 1877, and consists of nine members. All the acts establishing and regulating quarantine, and relating to the public health, and the practice of medicine, and the rules of the Board, and health ordinances of the city of New Orleans, were recently collected and published in a form convenient for an understanding of that locality, to which we have been accustomed to look with alarm and dread. Consciour of its failure to satisfy the demands of other Boards of Health-National, State and Local-especially as to the appearance of yellow fever below New Orleans, the Board invited a free conference with Representatives of other States during the meeting of the American Public Health Association in New Orleans in December last. Dr. Moses T. Runnels, of Indianapolis, was in attendance upon the Association, and was designated and appointed to represent this State in the Quarantine Convention. His detailed report shows that after a full discussion two Committees were appointed, one representing the Atlantic and Gulf States, the other the Ohio and Mississippi Valley States, to prepare a schedule of rules and regulations concerning those matters of quarantine and sanitation which are common to each region, and report at the next annual meeting of the Convention, to be held at Savannah, Ga. The General Government is expected to defray the expenses of all quarantine administration of this character, and Congress is to be asked to appropriate moneys for the purpose.
