No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 413 



strictly true, as it also prevails iu villages and towns. It is a filth 

 disease, in that it is propagated, or made possible by or through the 

 use of articles of food and drink, contaminated with the waste from 

 human bodies. For this reason, typhoid fever is a disgrace to our 

 civilization. 



Typhoid fever is dangerous to the occupants of any farm where 

 it exists, to all who visit the farm, especially in attending funerals 

 of the disease, and it is dangerous to those who purchase the pro- 

 ducts of any infected farm. 



Recently a ministerial friend called our attention to the family of 

 a rural parishioner, in whose family had occurred seven cases of 

 typhoid fever, extending over a period of six months. What a 

 long-drawn out time of misery and worry and suffering, and from a 

 cause which ought to be preventable I Once this disease is in a 

 family, it spreads from member to member through contaminated 

 food and drink, and from hand to mouth, that is from the hand 

 of the nurse to the mouths of the other inmates of the family. The 

 only nurse is often the wife and mother, who is, at the same time, 

 the general housewife and cook. How easily in her overworked 

 and distracted state of mind to forget her hands and through them 

 to convey the poison from the body of the patient to the food she 

 prepares. The nurse should always ask the physician to give her 

 a solution in which she may sterilize her hands every time after 

 she has handled the patient. At an encampment of the National 

 Guard of Pennsylvania, a few years ago, a helper to the cook infected 

 the food of a company, producing over forty cases of fever. 



Typhoid fever may be conveyed from the patient to food by the 

 house-fly. The sick room should be screened. The germs may reach 

 the well. This is often situated too near the privy, and is often con- 

 taminated with the excreta from the patient. Their excreta should 

 not be thrown into the privy or upon the soil, but into a pit in the 

 garden, and covered with earth; or better still, sterilized in the bed- 

 pan before being placed in the privy. The doctor will explain how 

 to do this. Again, wells should be so walled and curbed that the 

 water without cannot be contaminated by surface drainage, nor by 

 insects and small animals. 



Typhoid fever is certainly a disease which can be spread at fun- 

 erals, to those in attendance. This is probably accomplished in eat- 

 ing a meal or in drinking from the well at an infected house. It 

 would be a good rule to chain the pump-handle at funerals for ty- 

 phoid fever, and not to eat at such houses. It is also possible that 

 the disease may be conveyed by shaking hands with and kissing 

 the inmates of the afflicted house. 



There is danger to those who purchase the products from in- 

 fected farms. Investigations made by the State Board of Health 

 have repeatedly traced typhoid fever to milk from infected farms. 

 This has recently been done at Carbondale and West Chester. In 

 the case of the latter place, a remarkable statement was made and 

 signed by six of the leading physicians of the town in which the fol- 

 lowing expression occurs: "We would look with suspicion upon 

 the products of any farm through which the drainage of West Ches- 

 ter flows." 



The sewage of hundreds of towns in Pennsylvania flows through 

 dairy farms. The cows stand in the filthy streams, their udders 



