Abstract
From time immemorial, and until a very recent period, the air has been considered the chief vehicle of infection. It was certainly so when I became health officer thirty years ago. In Parke's Hygiene, the standard sanitary text-book of the time, and in the edition of 1883, malaria and yellow fever were considered typical air-borne diseases. Typhoid fever was also said to be largely air-borne as was cholera and dysentery and the diarrheal diseases, and sewer air was alleged an important factor in their production. Typhus fever was thought to be spread by means of a vitiated atmosphere, as was also Oriental plague. My immediate official predecessor, Dr. Snow, a distinguished sanitarian of the time, considered scarlet fever only slightly contagious, but due to some epidemic influence, meaning thereby some general infection of the atmosphere. The late Dr. Janeway of this city taught me that the old water-courses of New
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