HEALTH, Public, Regulation of, super vision, protective and preventive work through out the nation, carried on by the United States Public Health Service, a branch of the Treasury Department, under the directorship of a com missioned medical officer, with the title of Surgeon-General. The headquarters is in Washington, D. C. Important achievements of the service are the suppression of yellow fever in the South; the control of bubonic plague in California, Porto Rico and New Orleans; the discovery of an effective method for the pre vention and treatment of pellagra; demonstra tions of how malaria may be prevented in practically any locality at a comparatively small cost; the establishment of a series of trachoma hospitals and the institution of educational measures to combat the spread of trachoma in the Appalachian Mountains; and the beginning of a nation-wide campaign for the improvement of rural sanitation, which has already resulted in great diminution of disease in the districts where the methods advocated have been ap plied. On the entry of the United States into the European War the service took charge of the sanitation of extra cantonment zones, co operating with the military and State and local health authorities in bringing about the elimina tion of any insanitary conditions which might threaten the health of the military forces and the civilian population. At the Hygienic Laboratory in Washington, technical studies are carried on, and there also are conducted the tests of preparations necessary for the enforce ment of the law regulating the sale of biologi cal products in interstate traffic. The Division
of Scientific Research supervises field and laboratory investigations of infectious diseases, industrial and school hygiene, rural sanitation, public health administration, coastal waters, shellfish pollution and water supplies and sew age. Field headquarters and laboratories are located at convenient places throughout the country. The Foreign and Insular Quarantine and Immigration Division supervises the 61 quarantine stations in the United States; 26 stations in the insular stations; 89 stations for the medical inspection of immigrants; while, 18 officers are stationed at foreign American consulates to assist in the administration of the quarantine laws and the medical inspec tion of emigrants. The Division of Domestic Interstate) Quarantine supervises measures the prevention of the spread of infectious and contagious diseases in interstate traffic and the administration of the interstate quarantine regulations relating to food and drink furnished passengers on common carriers. It also co operates with State and local health authorities in the suppression and eradication of such epidemic diseases as plague, cholera, yellow fever typhus fever, smallpox and leprosy. The establishment of a national home for lepers under the administration of the Public Health Service was approved 3 Feb. 1917 and $250,000 appropriated for the purpose.