MICHIGAN was among the first states to create a Board of
Health. Its Board was established in the early 1870's, and
its Secretary, Dr. Henry B. Baker, was for many years a leader
of the movement for public hygiene and sanitation within the
state and nation. For a decade a national movement to improve
public health had been gaining strength. Since the years 1857-
1860, national sanitary conventions had been assembling in Phila-
delphia, Baltimore, New York, and Boston. During the 1860's
the Civil War had temporarily interrupted progress. But once the
war was over, the campaign to combat the ravages of dangerous
communicable diseases, especially those which had been reaching
epidemic proportions, began again to gather momentum. In 1865
Dr. Stephen Smith and others had conducted a sanitary survey of
New York City and exposed the wide-spread prevalence of diar-
rheal disease, typhus fever, smallpox, etc., among its crowded
tenement sections and elsewhere. By 1872 the influence of his
work had gathered a sufficient following to bring about the
appointment of a preliminary committee to form the American
Public Health Association; and with its first meeting modern
public health practice was given an impetus. The first volumes
of its Proceedings are said ¹ to contain

a mine of information, for they indicate the vital matters that concerned
the leaders of that day. Many of the principles that were presented in the
very first report have become the foundation stones on which public health
in America has been built. The broad viewpoint and scope of interest of
these pioneers may be indicated by the subjects that were discussed at the
first meeting. Among others one notes: 1. Public health education, which
was considered even at that time to be of primary importance in public
health matters. 2. Vital statistics--race and nationality, rural and urban
factors in relation to mortality. 3. The germ theory of disease. 4. The
epidemiology of typhoid fever and particularly the relationship of water

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