ABSTRACT
The organization of New York's health department and the many sanitary rules incorporated in the tenement laws were reflections of the state of medical knowledge. Information and advice were secured from the heads of the fire, buildings, and health departments, architects, engineers, builders, and even tenement dwellers. Lawrence Veiller, though not one to minimize his own achievements, recognized his debt to earlier tenement house investigations and laws and in a magnificent piece of research codified all existing laws relative to tenements. To prevent bad housing in the future and correct tenement evils of the past, Veiller and his co-workers realized a new and better rule book was needed. When the first infected ships began arriving, Hermann M. Biggs and Commissioner Joseph D. Bryant exploited the crisis and convinced the Board of Health to create a new division of pathology, bacteriology and disinfection.
