BUFFALO MEDICAL JOURNAL.

A Monthly Review of Medicine and Surgery.

EDITOR:

WILLIAM WARREN POTTER, M. D.

All communications, whether of a literary or business nature, books for review and exchanges, should be addressed to the editor 238 DELAWARE AVE., BUFFALO, N. Y.

VOL. LXII.

FEBRUARY, 1907.

No. 7

The Water Supply of Buffalo.

THE question of a pure water supply for Buffalo is again

being agitated. The people of the city, if they have anything to say about the matter at all, say it in the privacy of their own homes when they see the muddy water which is their portion after every little wind storm, and they say what they have to say where it can not affect their standing as christians and lawabiding people. It is difficult to understand just why Buffalo, situated as it is, at the very threshold of unlimited supply, should be so illy-provided with so necessary an article as pure

Whether the fault lies with the people themselves or with the lobbyists and the grafters who have delayed matters for their own good fortune, or with the ingrown Buffalo tendency to wait in the hope that the water problem may work out its own salvation, The Journal does not pretend to say. But with the experience of scores of other cities and countless little towns which have provided their peoples with decent water, it surely should not be a difficult matter to form some comprehensive plan by which something tangible might be evolved.

There has been water talk enough to saturate a dozen cities of the size of Buffalo; all it has resulted in has been the employment of experts to advise regarding the system; the frequent and suspiciously persistent shriek of warning to boil the water, a cry which is so commonplace that it has become a joke and taken its place among the standing jibes of the local newspaper humorists.

There has been argument for and against this system and that; to build an intake far out in the lake would be best; to build such an intake would be the height of folly and idiocy; a filtration plant is what is needed; filtration is a curse and a

fraud; a reservoir in the Hamburg hills is the city's only salvation; such a work would wreck the city and the supply would be inadequate; and so it goes, with no result in sight and no relief.

The latest effort to get something like a human idea of what the situation really is-the consideration of the water question in its broadest sense by the Academy of Medicine at a recent meeting, was productive of nothing at all except a triple row of damnations from Col. Ward, the Commissioner of Public Works. Of course, physicians do not know a thing about the water supply. · Admitting that scientific men who make a business of proper water supply are invaluable as advisors in such cases, it still occurs to the casual observer that it might be of benefit to the city if the mayor should select several professional gentlemen who have neither axes to grind nor jobs to hunt, and get their views in official form, not alone on the present needs of the city in relation to water, but on the best method of supplying the necessity in the future. Let these men be so well placed that they would not be amenable to the flatteries of the filtration plant or other water contractors; their opinion would have the advantage of being based on what a good water supply should be for the people and not how much there is in the construction of a plant or an intake.

St. Louis, Boston, Washington and other cities have been through the same trouble; the only difference is that these cities. have met the difficulty promptly-whether adequately or not, need not be here considered at this time. The fact that they, together with Cleveland and Detroit, have done something, means much for their progressiveness; this fact alone may be one of the reasons why both Cleveland and Detroit have dropped Buffalo behind them in civic progress and census returns.

On the surface Buffalo appears to be suffering at the present time from business anemia and a certain congenital sluggishness.

The Academy of Medicine made a good beginning in taking up the water question. Its mistake was in inviting the officeholder and opening the way for the Aldermanic farce of "hearing interested parties." What the Academy of Medicine should do is to wade into civic conditions affecting the public health, and wade deep; make of it as thorough a job as maybe; probe deep; praise with unstinted praise where good is found; where bad is found, damn loudly with unstinted damnation-and keep it up.

Buffalo has pure water within reach. The only thing necessary is to get it, and get it by a method which will insure not only purity but a quantity sufficient for the needs of the city of to-day and the inland metropolis of the future.

What Buffalo needs is civic surgery.

At present there is every probability that the proposed new intake to the Emerald channel will be three years building. then, Buffalo will suffer for water.

'Till

Annual Report of the State Cancer Laboratory. HE annual report of the State Cancer Laboratory, the work of which is done in the Gratwick Laboratory building on High street, Buffalo, has been submitted to Dr. Eugene Porter, State Commissioner of Health. While there is nothing startling in the nature of discovery the report is interesting showing as it does that the increase in cancer is persistent and progressive, as Dr. Roswell Park pointed out in 1898. The figures showing comparative death rates for cancer and tuberculosis in two different groups of three years are startling in themselves. They show that tuberculosis has decreased 4.9%, and that cancer has increased 25.4%. The report states that the evidence is now sufficient for the Department of Health of the State of New York, as the result of researches conducted in this laboratory, to recommend to all health officers of the State, the desirability of proper sterilization and disposal of all dressings of cancer cases, the fumigation and sterilization of rooms occupied by cancer patients.

Although there is little evidence that individuals associated with cancer cases are in any immediate danger of contracting the disease, it is extremely probable that the contagion of cancer can be transferred from cancer patients to their surroundings, where in course of time it assumes a form in which it is again capable of infecting susceptible individuals.

This last statement is one which, though not novel in any sense, places the seal of official laboratory approval upon the similar statements made by Dr. Irving P. Lyon, of Buffalo, in his report of six or seven years ago, following his very painstaking investigations concerning the so-called cancer houses.

The present report deals rather fully with the work done by Ehrlich, of Frankfort, and the Royal Cancer Research Fund in London, and requests that the $3,000 which was cut out of the appropriation last year be given to the laboratory in this year's budget. Commenting on the question of finance the report says:

In this connection I desire to call attention to the fact that the principals in the laboratory have, from the beginning, served it with great devotion on salaries which are not commensurate with their standing in the scientific world. The direction which cancer research has necessarily taken in the last two years necessitates the maintenance of a large staff of assistants, and with our present appropriation we are forced to employ a staff of thirteen individuals.

The relative expenditure for stock, material and equipment has so greatly increased by the direction which our work has necessarily taken, that the laboratory has from the first paid the lowest possible salaries to its employes. The great increase in the cost of living will make it necessary to remedy some of the greatest discrepancies in this connection during the coming year, unless the laboratory is to lose the services of some of its most important members.

The members of the staff are: H. R. Gaylord, director; G. H. A. Clowes, chemist; G. N. Calkins, biologist; F. W. Baeslack, assistant in biology and histology; C. A. Maclay, secretary; D. R. Averill, assistant in chemistry; F. A. Payne, janitor, and six assistants classed as laborers.

The expenditures for the past year were $17,748.13. The laboratory should have more money for research purposes and if one were inclined to criticise the report at all it could only be on the score of excessive and retiring modesty of its author in relation to money matters. Too long has unselfish and selfsacrificing science been the plaything of commerce, and the toy of the politician. The State of New York is not poor and now that it has been definitely and officially shown by figures, which cannot lie, that cancer is on the increase, added impetus is given to the work of research. The paltry $21,000 asked for is too small, far too small and insignificant an amount to meet the requirements of the staff of the State Cancer Laboratory as at present constituted, and particularly is this so when one seriously considers the amount of work being done in the institution. Not only is original research work being carried on night and day, but some one of the staff is closely and personally watching the progress of work in European laboratories much of the time. The State should appropriate whatever amount the members of the staff deem necessary for their requirements. To say the least it is humiliating for men of standing in the scientific world to be compelled to plead for increase of salary, to even beg for an increase of pay to meet the increased cost of living.

H

Health Department Problem.

EALTH COMMISSIONER WENDE has cancelled the permit under which a slovenly butcher conducted. a slaughter house. This was done after two hearings and a warning.

The place maintained by this butcher was reported by Dr. Wende's inspector as "filthy."

Much time has been spent, since the slaughter house scandal, in searching out the unsanitary places in Buffalo in connection with its meat supply, and everything has been fairly well cleaned

up.

There are other things which might be considered in connection with public health, matters which have been corrected by the health departments of other cities. One is flat wheels on the street cars which rip-slam-bang their riotous way through the residential streets making days disturbing and nights hideous.

The nerves of passengers would be relieved of rather high tension if attention were paid to the screeching of metal bound street car doors and the squawking of register rods.

Siren whistles with their unholy lost-soul wails, the assinine whistle salutes of tugs and boats which greet the arrival of anything new or novel in the marine line; the yells, the shouts, the curses and the "get-aps" and "whoa-a-a-as" and the banging of ash cans by the drivers and workers on the wagons of the Buffalo Sanitary Company which has the cleaning contracts; these are all matters which affect the public health and ought to be eliminated.

THE growth of the average finger nail is computed to be onethirty-second of an inch a week, or a little more than an inch and a half a year. The finger nails, according to "Popular Science Siftings," are said to grow faster in the summer than in the winter. The nail on the middle finger grows faster than any of the other nails, and that on the thumb grows slowest. It is also said that the nails on the right hand grow faster than those on the left hand. According to the rate of growth stated, the average time taken for each finger nail to grow its full length is about four and a half months, and at this rate a man seventy years old would have renewed his nails one hundred and eightysix times. Taking the length of each nail as half an inch, he would have grown seven feet nine inches of nail on each finger, and on all his fingers and thumbs an aggregate length of seventyseven and a half feet.

It was a singularly beautiful law of nature, observes The Tribune, which Mendeléeff, the Russian chemist, whose death is announced, was the first to observe. He noticed that when the elements were grouped on the sole principle of similarity of qualities a remarkable relationship also existed between the atomic weights of the members of a family. It was on the strength of that strange fact that Sir William Ramsay, after terrestrial helium and argon had been found, predicted the discovery of another primary substance resembling them and possessing characteristics which were distinctly specified. The forecast, it will be remembered, had a triple verification at Sir William's own hands. Within a surprisingly short time he added neon, krypton and