1893-1894 - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

148 NORTH CAROLINA BOARD OF HEALTH.
lack those qualities to any appreciable extent they are worthless. The
practical question is, how can they be obtained? The answer is, from
the cities and towns. While such statistics would not be as valuable as
those collected from the whole State, it is the best that can Vje done, and
they would furnish excellent samjiles of the health conditions in the
different sections of the State and an admirable basis for comparison
with similar communities in other States and countries. But even in
cities and towns it is no easy matter to secure full and reliable mortuary
statistics. It cannot be done, in the opinion of the writer, excejit under
the strict and vigilant enforcement of a stringent ordinance imposing a
decided penalty for the burial or removal from the corporate limits of a
dead body except upon a burial permit issued by a designated official,
based upon a death certificate, giving, chief among other things, the
cause of death, signed by the attending physician, or, in cases where
there was no attending physician, by the nearest friend, and sworn to
by him before a magistrate. The authorities should impress this ordinance
particularly upon the undertakers in such a manner as to effectually
prevent their undertaking the preparations for burial until the
burial permit is produced. Something less than a year ago we sent to
every town in the State having five hundred or more inhabitants, and to
all county-seats of less population, a model ordinance, with sample
blanks, in which the regulations suggested above were set forth, in the
hope that it might be generally adopted and mortuary statistics collected
in every place on the same plan. While only two towns have formally
adopted the ordinance as a whole, a number have it essentially, and the
statistics sent in we believe to be generally reliable. But we cannot help
feeling when we note a death-rate very much smaller in one town than
in another of about the same sanitary conditions that the former either
has an imperfect ordinance or does not enforce a good one. We are not
willing to admit, of course, that any municipality would deliberately
"fudge," as we used to say in marbles, on its sisters
We have brought forward this subject because of its importance and
in the hope that those of our readers living in cities and towns will
interest
themselves in the matter sufficiently to inquire as to the ordinance
on the subject and as to the enforcement of the same. The display of
such an interest on the part of the medical men of any city or town
would surely have its effect upon the authorities and make for the perfecting
of the returns.
MALARIA AND DRINKING WATER.
If we have a sanitary "fad" it is the influence of the drinking water
in the production of malarial diseases. It has always possessed a peculiar
interest for us, originated possibly by the plasmodia imbibed in