ABSTRACT
Smith appeared ready to slow down after finishing his mental illness work. He became president of the New York State Medical Association in 1890 as an elder statesman and left the Bellevue teaching staff in 1891, at the age of sixty-eight. He served as a volunteer advisor to the city health board when cholera threatened New York in 1892. He could have enjoyed a quiet academic retirement; however, after the governor reappointed him to the State Board of Charities in 1893, he was more engaged with civic business than ever. He was working on a high-profile investigation of the Elmira Reformatory when President Cleveland asked him to represent the United States at the Paris Sanitary Conference in 1894. This was Smith’s only European trip, and he took his daughter, Florence, along. He enjoyed seeing the sights and was surprised to find that his Civil War knee operation made him well-known to English surgeons. The Paris Conference accomplished little but reinforced Smith’s belief in the need for coordinated international control of infectious diseases.
