Book excerpt: Excerpt from Annual Report of the State Board of Health of the State of Kansas, 1887 Measures for the improvement of the public health, consisting chiefly in the introduction of sewerage, drainage, ventilation, a pure water supply, and in the removal of filth, were begun in many unhealthy towns in our own and foreign countries, more than thirty years ago. Salisbury, England, an old town, had an unenviable reputation for un healthfulness. The plague had ravaged it repeatedly, and once had de stroyed one-fourth of its inhabitants. Cholera in 1849 entailed a heavy mortality. Improvements were begun in 1853. The death-rate had been 27 to the for nine years before the improvements; for the same period after, 21. In Cardiff, we find the mortality was Similarly reduced from 33 to 20; in Croyden, from 23 to 18; in Newport, from 31 to 21 in the In these towns the saving of life was respectively 20, 32, 22, and 32 per cent. With this improvement in the general death-rate, there was at the same time a striking decrease in the deaths from particular diseases; for in the towns named there was a reduction in the mortality from typhoid fever of from 36 per cent. In the lowest to 75 per cent. In the highest instances, and from consumption a decrease ranging from 17 to 49 per cent. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.