1866

Following Stephen Smith’s appearance before joint session of NY State Legislature in 1865, NYC Metropolitan Health Bill, largely drafted by Smith, becomes law in 1866; the bill “marked a pivotal point in the history of public health in New York City and the United States as a whole” (Rutkow, 271). The Metropolitan Board of Health responded to the outbreak of cholera in NYC with isolation of cholera patients and disinfection of their excretions (277). This approach to cholera did not change when bacterial etiology gained hold in 1880s: the cholera vibrio replaced the cholera poison; the yellow fever poison became the yellow fever germs. Both “were still to be controlled by isolation of patients and disinfection of the environment surrounding them” (280). The Metropolitan Health Bill was also a response to the NY Draft Riots of 1863, a four-day orgy of violence against blacks and destruction of property which awoke city residents to the extent of poverty, filth, and misery in tenement dwellers. Then, in 1871, Members of NY Citizens Assn. met to plan organization of the American Public Health Assn. (Ellis, ch 1).