Every great center of population is occasionally overtaken with pestilence, and with various local and travelling diseases. Manhattan has not been the exception. In 1702, the yellow fever was brought from St. Thomas, of which over six hundred persons died, about one-twelfth of the entire population. In 1732, an infectious disease appeared, of which seventy persons died in a week. In 1743, a bilious plague prevailed, of which two hundred and seventeen died. In 1745, malignant fever prevailed; and in 1747, the bilious plague reappeared. Yellow fever returned in 1791, 1794, 1795, 1797, 1799, 1801, 1803, 1805, 1822, 1856, and 1870.

Over thirty-five hundred died of cholera in 1832; nine hundred and seventy-one in 1834, five thousand and seventy-one in 1849, three hundred and seventy-four in 1852, and a small number in 1866. There are a few cases of cholera nearly every year. A great city, unless carefully guarded, soon becomes a sink of putrefaction, which not only aggravates but engenders disease. To prevent as far as possible this unnecessary waste of human life, the sanitary interests of the metropolis have been for some years committed to the care of a Board of Health Commissioners, vested with large power, who have given their entire attention to this branch of the public service.

THE NEW HEALTH DEPARTMENT, under the present charter, consists of the Police Commissioners of New York, the Health officer of the Port, and of four Commissioners of Health, appointed by the Mayor, for the term of five years, with a salary of $5,000 each, two of whom must have been practising physicians in. the city, for a period of five years previous to their appointment. The Department is divided into four bureaus. The chief officer of one is called the "City Sanitary Inspector." This officer must be selected from the medical fraternity, having practised ten years in the city. Complaints against fat or bone-boiling establishments, or other questionable buildings or practices, are made to this officer. Another is styled the "Bureau of Sanitary Permit." This Bureau grants licenses for burials, without which a dead body cannot be brought into or removed from the city. Another is the "Bureau of Street Cleaning," The chief officer of the fourth Bureau is called the "Register of Records." This is the bureau of vital statistics. He records without chargeall marriages, births, deaths, and the inquisitions of the coroners. It is the duty of every clergyman, or magistrate, solemnizing matrimony, to report the same to this officer, and of physicians to report all births and deaths occurring in their practice. The former Board of Health was very vigilant and useful, guarding with scrupulous care the sanitary interests of the city, warding off cholera and various contagious diseases, and rendering the metropolis so salubrious as to impoverish many physicians. The first year of the new Board has witnessed the ravages of yellow fever on Governor's Island, with a number of deaths.