This study covers only a small portion of the full story as the history ends in 1822. After this year, Boston's government changed from a town to a city. The early 1820's also mark the dividing line in the North between the intense concern with yellow fever that followed Philadelphia's epidemic of 1793 and the advent of Asiatic cholera in 1832. Moreover, in the 1830's and 1840's a new phase in the history of public health, the so-called sanitary reform movement, became apparent. Many have looked upon this period as the beginning of the modern public health movement; consequently the earlier years have been neglected and their history is less well known. Although this work is restricted to Boston, by and large, all American colonies shared the same essential homogeneity, and the same diseases. Thus the history of public health in Boston becomes significant for the whole American experience. -- from Preface.