Big Health Exposition

To Be Held in New York Early Next Spring.

AN INTERNATIONAL SHOW.

Charles F. Wingate, the Director, Asserts That the Exposition Promises to Be Entertaining and Instructive — The Display Will Cover a Floor Space of Over Three Acres — Sanitary Living Pictures One of the Chief Features.

An International health exposition will be held at the Grand Central Palace in New York for five weeks, beginning April 25 next, under auspices and with a breadth of scope and an amount of invested capital of such a magnitude as are a guarantee of conscientious and intelligent effort, and which cannot fail to awaken widespread popular interest.

A number of food shows have taken place in New York and other cities, beside a collection of building materials, notably in New York, Brooklyn and Chicago, while there is a permanent hygienic museum at Washington. But no attempt has hitherto been made to gather together under one roof the wonderful variety of objects which illustrate the immensely wide and important field of sanitary science and the marvelous progress which has been made in that direction of recent years. The time is ripe for such an undertaking. An extraordinary revival of interest in sanitary matters has lately been shown, partly because of the recent epidemics at New Orleans and at other places, and also as a result of the late municipal reform movements, which have led to an active discussion of street cleaning methods, public baths and playgrounds, water supply and other sanitary problems.

There will be a display covering more than three acres of floor space, of practical apparatus and appliances of all kinds, taking in everything from Mr. Atkinson’s Aladdin stove to a huge garbage crematory in actual operation. There will be all the modern systems of house heating, ventilation, plumbing, etc.; comparative exhibits of new and primitive hospital arrangements, systems of sewerage for cities and villages, an historical library, a model school room and the other kind, health foods, model tenements, etc. The exhibits, however, are not all there is of the exposition. There will be provided by the management a course of popular lectures for every day, discussions by various societies, representatives of boards of health, etc., and the whole affair in its full development will be in reality an educational congress.

No exhibits will be accepted which have not been approved of by specialists in their respective departments. Charles F. Wingate, the sanitary engineer, is the supervising director; B. E. Greene, secretary; Montgomery Maze, treasurer. One of the most interesting features will be the department of electricity, showing its applications not only to health and sanitary matters, but as an aid in household economics. Luther Stieringer, consulting electrical engineer of the world fair, Atlanta, Nashville and Omaha expositions, has been retained in a similar capacity for the International Health Exposition. Nikola Tesla will make a personal exhibit and will show for the first time some novel apparatus designed for the cure of certain diseases, which will be submitted to the medical profession for critical examination. Mr. Tesla is heartily in sympathy with the objects of the exposition and will communicate his views as to some of the possibilities of electricity in the prevention of diseases and the prolongation of human life. This is the first public exhibit which he has ever made in New York, and Tesla's accomplishments are always of world wide interest. The phonograph, the creation of Thomas A. Edison, will be shown in applications which the public is not familiar with — not as a toy, but as a scientific instrument which only needs to be understood, to be a necessity in every well-equipped specialist's laboratory. With the co-operation of Tesla and Edison it is hoped to place the science of electro-therapeutics and the surgical uses of electricity upon an honest basis — to establish their legitimacy, to show their limitations and to remove the cloud of quackery under which they have been too much enveloped.

Charles F. Wingate, the supervising director, says of his part in the exposition:

"The present exposition is a product of evolution and a striking instance of taking the tide at its flood. My own connection with it, which came about quite accidentally, is a case of greatness being thrust upon a person. Here is a large building, commodious and accessible, representing an investment of over a million and a half dollars, planned for the special object of holding industrial exhibitions, by its owners, the Ooelet estate, and with over nine acres of available floor space, one-third of which we shall utilize. The several exhibitions held here in the past were all very successful, but the present exhibit promises to surpass anything of the kind ever held in this country, and even the famous healtheries which attracted the whole fashionable world in London and was immensely popular.

"The interest in sanitary subjects is confined to no class of persons. Dr. Stanley Hall, the famous educator, devoted fully half of his recent address on laying the cornerstone of a woman's college to the subject of health. Special hygienic departments are being added in many periodicals. Boards of trade and chambers of commerce are alike concerned in discussing measures for the protection of the public health. In Atlanta at the present time there is a smallpox scare, and although no deaths have been reported, the loss to merchants on their Christmas trade is estimated at more than $1,000,000. A committee of the New York Board of Trade is taking active steps toward securing a better quarantine system and a National Board of Health. The problem of draining the Jersey meadows is being practically considered as a matter demanding immediate action. At Paterson an epidemic of typhoid fever has drawn attention to the risks consequent upon an impure milk supply. In Plainfield every one is interested in the new sewage farm and the lately erected garbage destructor. Bayonne is concerned lest its citizens should suffer from the sewage of Newark being emptied into the New York Bay, near its shores. Jersey City is alarmed at the prospect of a huge abattoir for hogs being erected there. And so in every large and small community sanitary problems are coming up for discussion and intelligent people are eager to be enlightened regarding them. The members of the advisory committee are not mere figure heads, but are persons directly and practically interested in advancing public health. Interests, not a body of amateurs, but mostly trained and experienced workers. I have been especially gratified at the interest which they have manifested and in their willingness to cooperate in making the exposition a great success. There will be nothing sensational in the methods pursued, but we shall depend solely upon legitimate attractions.

"Free lectures will be given by specialists upon a variety of topics, and especially to explain the advantages of the various articles which will be exhibited, and to show to the recent improvements in sanitation. Instead of the ordinary clumsy catalogue overloaded with advertisements, a handsome magazine will be issued descriptive of the exhibition, and giving a record of progress during the past century, in every department of sanitation.

"Probably the most attractive feature in the exhibition will be the arrangement of what may be called Sanitary Living Pictures, to show certain features in a practical way. For example, a tenement house sweat shop will be shown in actual operation in contrast to a model workshop, with all modern improvements; also, a police lodging room redolent with damp and every kind of foulness, side by side with a model lodging house, such as may be seen opposite Bellevue Hospital; also an old country poorhouse cell, with a "mad woman" chained to the floor, in contrast to a modern insane asylum ward; a model school, in contrast to an unmodel school, and so on with every department of practical hygiene. Such a series of exhibits cannot fail to prove of great interest, and a valuable means of popular enlightenment.

"A conference will be held during the exposition of delegates from town and village improvement societies throughout this and neighboring states, and it is also proposed to invite representatives from state boards of health throughout the Union to take part in a similar conference to discuss national and local sanitary problems.

"An exhibition of this kind appeals especially to women, who have the interest of the home so largely at heart. When we consider the services which women have performed in the line of sanitation, it might be called distinctly woman's field. Beginning with Florence Nightingale's wonderful labors in the Crimean War, and taking in the services performed by Miss Dix, Miss Ellen Collins in the United States sanitary commission, Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler and Miss Rosalie Butler of the State Charities Aid Association, Miss Octavia Hill and Miss Mary Carpenter in England, Miss Clara Barton of the Red Cross movement, Mrs. H. M. Plunkett, author of "Woman, Plumbers and Doctors"; Miss Juliet Carson, Miss Parloe and Mrs. Richards in the field of scientific cookery, Miss Helen Campbell in industrial hygiene, Mrs. Ballington Booth in her slum and prison work, Mrs. Mary Trautmann and her associates of the New York Health Protective Association, Mrs. Dr. Kinnicutt in street cleaning, Dr. Jane E. Robbins of the college settlement and Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago; Mrs. Frederick Nathan of the Consumers' League, and last, but not least, Miss Frances E. Willard and Lady Henry Somerset and with their host of temperance workers, it may be justly claimed that women are the apostles of hygiene and the true sanitary reformers."