Excerpt from Annual Report of the Health Department of the City of Richmond, Va: For the Year Ending December 31, 1917 With profound respect, I herewith submit for your consideration the forty-sixth annual report of the Richmond Health Department, bearing the statistical summary of the last five months of my predecessor's incumbency and seven months under my own administration. Any city health officer of the country might well be pardoned a feeling of trepidation at taking charge of a department developed and for eleven years efficiently conducted by such an eminent authority in public health as Dr. Ernest C. Levy. This was distinctly the case with me. Humility and work, however, are not incompatible, and, meeting a desire on the part of the staff to preserve unimpaired the record of the Department, teamwork beyond all praise has been possible. I can therefore, in consequence, bring to you a report showing the lowest death rate ever recorded for the city. I entered office on May 1, 1917, with the problems of the summer sea son crowding fast upon the Department. This was manifestly no time to make changes in previous plans, even had such action been desirable or necessary. The logical course of carrying forward with energy the plans already made was therefore pursued. The wisdom of this policy has been demonstrated by results. At this point it is appropriate to say that the Health Department fully recognizes the obligation it is under to the Administrative Board of the City of Richmond for the co-operation it has given in the development of health work. The public should realize that the Administrative Board is the Board of Health of Richmond. Its control is absolute, and its capacity for hindering unlimited. Since this responsibility is unquestioned, the Board must, in justice, be credited in a large measure with the results. With confidence, I invite your attention to these results, knowing that they set a new and difficult standard in public health for Richmond. 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.