Section 4
SEC. 4. (a) The Insular Board of Health shall have general supervision over all the interests of the public health in the Philippine Islands, and shall especially study their vital statistics. (b) It shall make inquiry and investigation into the causes, pathology, and means of preventing diseases, especially epidemic diseases, including those of domestic animals, together with the sources of mortality and the effects of localities, employments, conditions, habits, foods, beverages, and medicines on the health of the people, and into the chemical composition and medicinal properties of the minero-medicinal waters of the Archipelago. (c) It shall disseminate useful information upon these and other kindred subjects among the people. (d) It shall draft and recommend to the central legislative body of the Islands suitable sanitary laws, including laws governing the admittance of persons to the practice of medicine and surgery, pharmacy, dentistry, midwifery, embalming, and undertaking; laws to control offensive and dangerous industries or occupations; and laws for the extension of the service of the Insular Board of Health into the several departments, provinces, and municipalities of the Philippines. (e) It shall cause to be prosecuted all violations of sanitary laws. (f) It shall have authority to require all health boards and their officers to forward to the Insular Board of Health copies of all their reports and publications, and such other information in regard to sanitary matters as it may request. (g) It shall have power to require reports and information concerning any matters with respect to which it may need information for the proper discharge of its duties from all public dispensaries, asylums, hospitals, infirmaries, prisons, penitentiaries, schools, and from the managers, principals, or officers thereof, and from all other public institutions, their officers or managers, and from the proprietors, managers, lessees, and occupants of all places of public resort throughout the Islands, or from common carriers. Refusal to give such information when called for by the Board shall be a misdemeanor punishable by a line not exceeding one hundred dollars or imprisonment not exceeding three months, or both, in the discretion of the court. (h) It shall have power and authority to make and enforce regulations for preventing and suppressing contagious or epidemic diseases of man or animals; to abate nuisances endangering the public health; to remove the cause of any special disease or mortality; and to make and enforce such interior quarantine regulations as it shall deem necessary in the city of Manila and all other cities, municipalities, provinces, departments or places where there are no local boards of health or health officers, and in places where boards of health or health officers exist, but where the sanitary laws or the regulations of the Board are not being carried into effect; and the power conferred upon municipal councils by section thirty-nine, subsections l, m, n, o, p, q, r, and s of the Municipal Code shall be exercised, subject to the supervision and control of the Insular Board of Health whenever in its opinion the exigency so requires. (i) It shall have power to engage suitable persons to render any special sanitary service or to make or supervise investigations and. examinations requiring expert skill, and to prepare plans or reports relating thereto. (j) It shall make no contracts and incur no liabilities in excess of the amounts duly appropriated for its use by the central legislative body of the Islands. (k) It shall decide upon suitable locations for the necessary laboratories for the production of vaccine virus, serums, and prophylactics, and shall recommend the construction of such laboratories to the central legislative body of the Islands. The virus, serums, or prophylactics produced at these laboratories shall be distributed and used under the direction of the Commissioner of Public Health. (l) It shall serve as the local board of health for the city of Manila.