The health office: from first officer to county department

1866 — the modern department

Sanitary first works: The regime begins with an appointment. The Government record of this history carries the office's founding: one of the acts of South Bend's first city government, in 1866, was Mayor George's appointment of the physician Louis Humphreys as the city's first health officer — Humphreys, who would himself be mayor from 1868 to 1872 — and, in that record's sentence, "his first works were sanitary, filling the holes and standing water of a river town." The office's early course is thin in the record reached: a city directory of 1901 names a later health officer, Dr. C. M. Butterworth, and by January 1920 the city's board of health had a secretary, Dr. Emil G. Freyermuth, answering for the city in an influenza epidemic, as the 1920 entry above records.

The modern regime is the county's. The St. Joseph County Department of Health sits in South Bend, at 227 West Jefferson Boulevard — the County-City Building — with a branch office in Mishawaka, and its own annual reports are the fullest statement of what the regime does. The 2013 report prints its divisions and their work: an Environmental Health division running the county's septic-system, wellhead-protection, well-drilling, and source-water programs alongside its Lead and Healthy Homes Program; a Food Services division whose permits and inspections the health officer's letter notes still increasing; a Nursing division carrying the immunization clinics, tuberculosis case management, and the STD clinic; and an Epidemiology and Emergency Preparedness division. The officers of the modern department, as its annual reports style them: Dr. Thomas A. Felger, health officer through 26 September 2014; Dr. Dale D. Deardorff, interim from 27 September 2014 and then health officer to 19 October 2015; and Dr. Luis Galup, interim from 19 October 2015 and health officer in the department's 2017 report.

The department's founding date, and the nineteenth-century course of the city's board of health between Humphreys and Butterworth, are not in the record reached and are named here as gaps rather than bridged. The milk, food, and water inspection regime of the earlier city likewise stands in the record only in its modern form, in the divisions above.

Sources:

1. Government record of this history — Mayor George's appointment of Dr. Louis Humphreys as the city's first health officer in 1866, his sanitary first works, and his mayoralty of 1868–1872; the office owned there, the regime side carried here.
2. St. Joseph County Department of Health, Annual Reports 2013–2017 (in.gov/localhealth/stjosephcounty) — the department's seat at 227 West Jefferson Boulevard, South Bend, and its Mishawaka branch; the 2013 report's division structure (Environmental Health, Food Services, Nursing, Epidemiology & Emergency Preparedness) and program list; and the officers' succession as the reports style it (Felger to 26 September 2014; Deardorff, interim then health officer, to 19 October 2015; Galup from 19 October 2015).
3. Indiana History Blog, "Spanish Influenza" series — Dr. Emil G. Freyermuth as secretary of the city's board of health in January 1920, as the influenza entry above carries. The 1901 directory naming of Dr. C. M. Butterworth as health officer is carried in this history's working record from the directory listing.