a remarkable way to families who obtained their water supply from a small rivulet which received the sewage of several houses up stream. At Hawkesbury, Upton, in Gloucestershire, a village of six hundred and fifty-seven inhabitants, within a short period ninety-five cases and fourteen deaths from enteric fever occurred, in groups following the excessive pollution of different wells in the village. Banbage, a village in Leicestershire, as recorded by Dr. Gwynne Harris, had an outbreak of enteric fever from the same cause last year. No one took the fever in the village except persons who certainly, or presumably, drank water from a particular pump; and every house supplied from that pump was subject to infection." Old pumps, it should be observed, from their great liability to accumulate fungi, are frequently a source of serious infection to water-as a beverage, especially. The able, and in many respects, exhaustive reports of the investigations of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, into the causes of the various diseases which depopulate that commonwealth, lie before us. They clearly show that a large percentage of her annual mortality is due to causes within the control of the corporate authorities. The sanitary measures put in operation under the supervision of the board are already developing legitimate results upon disease and premature death. The causes of fevers and consumption, from which large numbers of her population die, or are disabled, annually, appear to be avoidable causes to a large extent; causes not altogether subject to the control of the unhappy victims of the diseases themselves, but which are clearly amenable to organized, intelligent effort on the part of the state and corporate authorities. In respect to typhoid fever, which in malignity and mortality unquestionably heads the list of fevers, and which for many years past has been particularly prevalent in the Bay State, the sanitary reports of the board of health clearly show that it yields readily to those sanitary reforms which comprehend the removal of its exciting causes. nature of these causes have already been indicated. opinion as to their preventibility is thus stated in one of the interesting reports referred to: The The "With the single exception of such changes as may occur in soil through natural processes, all the various causes assigned are within human control; they are, indeed, instances of human neglect; of the omission of what all human experience has shown to be necessary for the preservation of the highest condition of general health. And, standing in the connection they do to one of our most destructive special diseases, they but enforce the truth of the general statement, that clear air and clean water are among our greatest blessings."* Below will be found some statistics of the disease in Boston, in confirmation of the writer's opinion: Table of Deaths from Typhoid Fever in Boston, compared with a fixea number of the living in each year. It is clear from this table that typhoid fever is dying out in Boston, under the improved means for the conservation of the public health. The report from which we quote says the diminution in the number of deaths was very marked "in the years following an abundant supply of pure water;"+ for by that means the people had not only a copious supply of pure water to drink, for bathing, culinary purposes, etc., but the air of the whole city was rendered more sweet and salubrious to * Sec. Ann. Rept. State Board of Health of Mass., p. 178. breathe by the cleansing effect of the water on the drains and sewers, which, before the introduction of water, were liable in dry seasons, especially, when there was the greater need of purity, to become obstructed and foul, vitiating the atmosphere for miles around, and adding largely to the average death-rate of the city. Moreover pure air is largely dependent upon abundance of pure water, and both are indispensable to human health. In large towns and populous districts, the individual, in spite of all the means within his power, would forever remain deprived of both; the means and considerations upon which their supply depend being under corporate control, and the associated effort of individuals and capital. This being obviously the case, we do not see how a corporate community could answer to itself for the faithful discharge of public functions, that neglects this indispensable requisite of public health. When a devouring fire devastates large cities and property interests, the economic sense of mankind is severely shocked, and the universal feeling is that some great blunder or defect exists, or has been committed; some law of public polity violated, or it could not have occurred. This feeling is the spontaneous promptings of an educated instinct; and the truth it foreshadows is no less true in respect to the prevention of morbific causes than it is to that of the more obvious material calamities, fire, railroad collisions, shipwrecks, etc. That shrewd, intelligent insight and foresight which apprehends and averts the causes of one set of these phenomena, are fully equal to the exigencies of the other; the essential requisite being in either instance a clear comprehension of causes, and an intelligent application of means to ends-nothing more. The sanitary importance of pure water, we have said, is second only to that of pure air. In the wise economy of organic nature its uses are most apparent. It is not needful to remind intelligent readers that the blood of all animals is, at least, four-fifths water (in most instances foul at that); nor that it is through the solvent and limpid properties of water that the elements of nutrition find access to the different parts of the living system, and are thus made available to the wants and necessities of organic life. The same properties of water, also render it available in depurating the system of worn out and effete débris; and of cleansing the various pores and channels of the body of that which otherwise would necessarily obstruct and vitiate it in every part. The external uses of this element are in all respects similar to those of the internal-dissolving and carrying away from the surface of the body foreign and unwholesome accumulations, and enabling the skin the more perfectly to perform its several functions. Indeed, the complex uses of water in the animal economy may all be summed up in one comprehensive infinitive-to cleanse. It cleanses the atmosphere of infusoria, smoke, unwholsome aromas, and noxious gases by absorbing them to itself, returning to the air meantime the elements of freshness and purity, its own etherial essence-vapor. The air over and in near proximity to large bodies of water, therefore, could not but be sensibly purer, and better fitted for purposes of respiration than elsewhere. Moreover, it cleanses our homes and highways; taking into itself the noisome accumulations incident to all compact communities of the streets and alleys, the drains and the sewers, and carrying them away to the sea. Hercin consists one secret of its great beneficence as a sanitary agent, and also, of its importance in connection with public baths. We have already remarked the improvement of the sanitary condition of Boston by the introduction to that city of an abundance of pure water. The sanitary condition of Philadelphia, New York, Brooklyn, and other cities has, likewise, been greatly ameliorated by the same means, and bear corroborative testimony of the beneficence of that element. So great, however, was the decline of fever in Boston the year following the introduction of the Cochituate water, that the physicians of that city very generally remarked it, and gave willing testimony to the wholesome salutary influence of the improvement. "I have noticed," writes one of the oldest and most experienced physicians, "since the time when Cochituate water was introduced, that typhoid fever has been less frequent in proportion to the population, and generally mitigated in its character." * And * Second Annual Report State Board of Health, p. 178. VOL. XXVIII.-NO. LV. 2 another testifies that fevers in general had been "comparatively less frequent, and much mitigated in severity since the introduction of pure water."* Cleanliness is so obviously antagonistic to fevers of every variety, that it would seem superfluous to detail evidence in support of the general sanitary influence of those measures best calculated to promote it in the bodies and abodes of mankind. The introduction of an abundant supply of Cochituate water to the fever districts of Boston could not but add a large per cent. to the average duration of life among all classes of her dense population, unless, indeed, that city were outside the operation of the ordinary laws of animate nature. What Cochituate water and effective drainage has done and is doing for Boston, Croton and Ridgewood waters are doing for the cities of New York and Brooklyn. In these cities, however, the evils of overcrowded tenements, in narrow, filthy streets and alleys, resemble those of London and Liverpool, and no amount of water alone is adequate to give the requisite relief. No class is safe from contamination that live in near proximity to them, however pure and sweet their own homes may be. The death rate is appreciably higher, even among the best class habitations of that kind (tenement) than in single dwellings. The following table on this subject, condensed from one in the First Annual Report of the Board of Health of the City of New York (1871), presents this fact in a clear light: Comparative Mortality in Tenement Houses, Charitable Institutions, and Private Dwellings, during the years 1868, 1869, and 1870-New York. * Second Annual Report State Board of Health, p. 178. |