about 45 degrees gave a sufficient pressure at the vent to insure utilization of all the gas contained in liquid form in the ordinary tank of carbon dioxid, used in drug stores for sodawater charging, which can be purchased in any town from the local druggist in varying sizes. The commercially exploited apparatus for the production of carbon dioxid snow is costly, and because of the trouble and expense involved in the use of a small tank of special size, which is soon emptied, is impractical for men who live outside of larger cities. Some simpler method of producing this material quickly and cheaply, in sufficient quantity for practically any use, was greatly needed. In the first place some form of holder was necessary for the ordinary-sized tank used by the drug stores, which would support it firmly at the right angel, allowing it to be moved about easily (as these tanks are somewhat explosive and very heavy) and which could be built at a small cost. Such an inexpensive frame, strongly built of oak and mounted on casters is readily made. The tank should not be kept for any length of time in a room the temperature of which is much above 70 F., as the gas is explosive. A cool cellar is the best place to store the tank when not in use.

I found the best material in which to make my snow was an ordinary glove-finger, one of porous leather preferred. The glove finger should be tied firmly over the vent of the tank with a shoestring, tied in a single bow knot, which is best because it can be untied quickly, so that there will be little melting of the crayon. This should be firmly wrapped two or three times about that part of the finger which is pulled over the vent. There should be no pin-holes in the glove finger. The wrench is placed on the tap of the tank and turned gradually until a moderate stream of gas enters the finger and balloons it just to tightness, as further pressure will do no good and will usually end by bursting the finger. In about a minute the finger will feel as if filled with putty, which means that the snow is forming right. Now the flow of gas should be continued with the same pressure and in a short time the glove finger will be found to be as hard as an icicle. The string is then untied and the finger pulled off the vent. If the

snow is to be kept for a time, it should be placed in a large test tube or closed porcelain dish and set directly on the ice, in a refrigerator, where it will keep for some hours if care is exercised. It is best, however, to use the snow at once. Το make a crayon, a sharp knife should be run around the glove finger about one or one and one-half inches from the end, so that it severs the end of the leather finger but does not cut deeply into the snow. When the loose end of the finger is pulled off an ice mould protrudes. The remainder of the glove finger becomes the holder of the crayon, while the snow is applied to the patient. The protruding end of the crayon of snow can now be sharpened like a lead pencil with a sharp knife and can be thus applied to a very minute area. The size of the crayon is readily regulated by tying a string anywhere along the length of the glove finger.

This method of making carbon dioxid snow is so simple that I am sure it will be a help to the busy man who wants to use a therapeutic agent of known value and is hampered by the expense or difficulty as to its easy production.

MUNICIPAL SANITATION.

BY B. FRANKLIN ROYER, M. D.

Chief Medical Inspector, Department of Health, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, Pa.

READ APRIL 10, 1912.

Mr. President, Members of the Luzerne County Medical Society, and Guests:

It is indeed a pleasant task to be invited by such a learned organization, famous throughout the Commonwealth for the excellence of its work and noted as the one medical society outside of the great medical centre of Pennsylvania that excels all societies in that great centre in its splendid programs and in the scientific interest of its members. I confess to a certain degree of embarrassment in appearing before an organization that has been addressed by so many learned students of medicine.

The question to which you have asked me to direct my remarks to-night is one of great interest to any public health worker, and the history of the development of municipal sanitation is not only interesting, but when properly approached, may be made instructive as well.

Historically, the problems of municipal sanitation date back to the period when human beings first began living in settlements for any definite period of time. Originally, man was compelled to observe the elementary laws of hygiene in his quest for food, hence, lived, slept and ate largely in the open air. In his quest for food he naturally learned to shun certain plants as poisonous, and learned to reject discolored water. As soon, however, as he began to live a community life, nature no longer acted as scavenger, and with the modification of natural conditions it became necessary for him to adapt himself to the new surroundings and to practice some simple sanitary procedures. The nomad in camp life soon learned to bury his dead and to bury or to remove to a distance the offal accumulating in the camp. Instead of moving away from these menaces, he removed the menaces from himself. The sanitary codes of many of the earlier peoples, especially among the Hebrews and Hindoos, went into great detail concerning the protection of drinking water, outlined methods to be followed in burying the dead, provided for the protection of food stuffs and included regulations for the control of marriages. It is true that practically all health legislation among these early peoples, whether in Greece or Rome, India or Egypt, or among the Israelites, was a sort of religious teaching and was in some way associated with directions from Heaven. Many of the health precepts of the time were high ideals of moral teaching.

In early Greece and Rome sanitary teaching aimed chiefly at developing fine physical specimens of manhood rather than in protecting man from disease. Aristotle taught that the "art of procuring health is as important to the statesman as the art of procuring subsistence and accommodation, for both alike pertain to economy, political as well as domestic," in some of his teachings expressing regrets that the exigencies of defense

render inadvisable sanitary municipal architecture, with wide straight streets for all citizens.

In Rome the Emperors regularly appointed health officers, the duties of these officers affecting very largely the health of the public, the positions commonly being filled by distinguished citizens. Rome's first public water supply was brought into the city by aqueduct, 313 B. C., and by 97 A. D., nine such aqueducts brought into the city to its forty-seven delivery tanks, a sufficient supply of pure water to give each citizen a per capita allowance of thirty-eight gallons. This water supply not only gave the citizens their drinking water but it was also used in flushing the great sewer of the city, the Cloaca Maxima. The purity of the water supply even at the beginning of the Christian era was protected by law. Anyone found polluting the springs or aqueducts could be fined 10,000 sesterii. Inspectors in uniform constantly patrolled these aqueducts and the source of supply in the vicinity of the springs, in order to prevent pollution, and there is pretty good evidence to believe that a number of reservoirs or delivery tanks were well covered.

Rome and Carthage, by paving their streets, building sewers and pavements and draining swamps made their cities habitable. Probably it is true that both Carthage and Rome developed their water works, sewers and pavements as a result of demands for physical comfort on the part of the leisure class and because of a growing esthetic sense, and possibly the same reasons prompted the cleansing of the streets.

A later day religion, teaching that pestilence were direct visitations of God, to be meekly submitted to by the populace, lessened the incentive to sanitary advancement, Europe paying dearly for this teaching and neglect by the ravages of the great epidemics of the years 550, 1000, 1345, 1350, 1485, 1528 and 1665. The death roll reported for black death in the years 1345 and 1350 numbered millions. China is said to have lost at this time 13,000,000, Paris 50,000, London and Venice each 100,000, and it is said that the Franciscan Friars in Germany lost 125,000. Lamjrecht says these epidemics were largely due to filth but the superstition of the people attributed them to

direct visitations of God and other causes. The calm submission to Divine wrath on the part of religious enthusiasts with the terrible financial losses upon all classes of society was borne for many years.

Early in the fourteenth century mercantile interests seemed to see the light and to feel that these visiations might be averted by some protective means. The earliest measures of this sort were provided in Italy, most likely in Venice, regulations being provided against the bringing into port of vessels carrying pestilential diseases. In fact, the very name "quarantine" originated from the Italian, but was probably not used until a later time. As you know, quarantine comes from the Italian “quaranta", meaning forty, because originally all periods of detention lasted forty days. With the establishment of regulations for the protection against the pestilential diseases, the prevailing theory of providential origin of plagues began to wane and the first sane procedures against filth were started.

Erasmus was among the first to preach this new doctrine, when he rejected the divine origin of the sweating sickness in 1485 to 1518 and attributed it to the unclean habits of the English and the poor ventilation of their houses. More's Utopia, published about this time, "was to be a land where the first consideration was cleanliness and health; slaughtering was to be done outside of towns, as many guild towns had already ordained. No foul or unclean thing was to infect the air by ill smells, while public hospitals were to provide for the isolation of infectious cases." Probably the greatest advance in sanitary procedures made because of this new teaching was that of clearly defining nuisances and to provide for their abatement. Bracton and Grenville, about this time, formulated the principle that "anything is a nuisance which in its consequences must necessarily tend to the prejudice of one's neighbor. For special damage the injured party might bring action, while for danger shared with the public, indictment was the remedy. The damage need not be to the property itself. If the use of the property was rendered disagreeable by the stench from the adjacent property the courts would