Summary: | Traces the development of the sanitary and health problems of New YorkCity from earliest Dutch times to the culmination of a nineteenth-century reform movement that produced theMetropolitan Health Act of 1866, the forerunner of the present New YorkCity Department of Health. Professor Duffy shows the city's transition from a clean and healthy colonial settlement to an epidemic-ridden community in the eighteenth century, as the city outgrew its health and sanitation facilities. He describes the slow growth of a demand for adequate health laws in the mid-nineteenth century, leading to the establishment of the first permanent health agency in 1866."
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