The health of Cambridge.
Henry P. Walcott, M. D., Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Health.
The health of the city of Cambridge is not a matter of guesswork, but stands accurately recorded in the pages of the registration reports of the State and in the successive volumes of the Census of the United States.Of the diseases which prevailed here before the first registration report in 1841, we know but little. When some disease broke out in the form of an epidemic—like smallpox, the dysentery, or malignant sore-throat, we find contemporary records perhaps of the numbers of those dying from these diseases, but more than this we cannot now ascertain.
The situation seems to have been always considered a healthful one, however, notwithstanding the large area of low-lying land in the town itself and in the surrounding country.
It would be supposed, probably, by most people, that the conditions of health in Cambridge and the neighboring city of Boston would be essentially the same,—the climate, the presence of large areas of flats exposed at low tide, the general character of the population, are apparently the same. Moreover, in Cambridge are also found large numbers of people living in tenement houses which are crowded and poorly provided with sanitary arrangements.
By the Eleventh Census Cambridge has a density of population represented by 18.77 persons to the acre; Boston, upon the same area, has only 18.51 persons. The most constant influence unfavorable to health is generally considered to lie in the density of population. Bearing this fact in mind, it is a pleasant surprise to find that Cambridge has better conditions for health than Boston has, notwithstanding the greater density of population in the former. In Cambridge 19.89 persons died out of every 1,000 in the course of the census year; in Boston [132] in the same year there died 24.79 out of every 1,000. That is to say, if Cambridge had been as unhealthy as Boston in this year, instead of losing by death 1,393 persons, there would have died 1,736. Even if nothing more than the money value of a man's life is to be considered in questions of the relative advantages of various cities as places of residence, these 343 lives represent a considerable advantage for the city of Cambridge. Especially when it is remembered that it has been found by experience to be true, that for every person that dies two other persons will be constantly sick throughout the year. It is a matter, therefore, of the greatest consequence that a city should be able to offer the best possible conditions of health, in order to attract new citizens.
The city has now a satisfactory system of sewerage—a water supply that is free from serious pollution, and a reasonable provision of open spaces,—a hospital for contagious diseases in connection with the Cambridge Hospital, and a Board of Health which has been in existence for nearly twenty years. Under all these favoring influences the city has made a record in healthfulness of which she may well feel proud, for she stood at the head of the list of thirty-one registration cities which were selected for comparison from the whole country in the Tenth Census of the United States. In that year there died in Cambridge only 17.46 persons for 1,000 living,—a rate not equaled by any city of 50,000 inhabitants in the country.
