This attitude extended into the 1880s. Here is an address from the Army Surgeon John S Billings, President of the Sanitarian Until quite recently, very little has been done in this country towards increasing our knowledge of the causes of diseases by observation and experimentation towards that end … We have not had the statistical data, such as the registration system of Great Britain provides, nor the laboratories for experimentation in comparative physiology and pathology such as are to be found in Germany, nor the trained statisticians and scientific observers who could make proper use of these things if we had them. All these, however, will come; some of them are now here. For the most part they can only be provided by governments, their cost and the length of time required to produce really valuable results, placing them beyond the reach of individual effort.