Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health is a 1865 report on the sanitary condition of New York City. The work on the report commenced in May 1864, when the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens launched a comprehensive street-by-street sanitary survey of the city. It was administered by a team of physicians tasked with documenting the living conditions of virtually every household in Manhattan.
Apart from the public healthcare concerns, the report was preoccupied with the “political and social aspects” of sanitation and made a direct link between its poor condition and draft riots of 1863: The mobs that held sway in our city during the memorable outbreak of violence in the month of July, 1863, were gathered in the overcrowded neglected quarters of the city. A first edition of the influential Viele map of Manhattan's relief, water bodies, and pristine shoreline was included in the report under the title Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York.
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Citations
References Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens' Association of New York. New York: D. Appleton and Co. 1865. Duffy, John (1968). A History of Public Health in New York City 1625-1866 (PDF). New York: Russell Sage. p. 553. Stokes, Isaac Newton Phelps (1926). The iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909. Vol. 5. New York: Robert H. Dodd.
