80 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of both house and barn, and we haven't been very much 

 troubled with filth diseases : why stir up trouble among us ? 

 Simply because there is no doubt that scarlet-fever, many 

 kinds of sore throat, diphtheria, dysentery, cholera-morbus, 

 and similar diseases, are more or less produced by filth-poison- 

 ing as just described; and we would like the farmers to have 

 a " heap less " of them than they have had formerly. We 

 want the farmers to stamp out every bit of disease in their 

 power. 



Don't sit on a powder-cask, or the safety-valve of a steam- 

 boiler ; because, if you do, the daily papers may some morn- 

 ing give you a short obituary notice. 



No ! do what you can to stamp out the causes of those dis- 

 eases which carry off twenty-eight out of every hundred of 

 our population. 



And don't wait till you say you can see, smell, or taste the 

 impurity in your well-water. To be sure, the lower animals 

 are furnished with a higher grade of sense-perception than 

 is man, for the very necessity of self-protection in this direc- 

 tion; and this protection is almost perfect in them. But 

 man is much more sensitive to disease than are the brutes, 

 and, in order to protect himself, he has the mental powers 

 superadded to sense. He must reason over and above the 

 sense of smell, sight, and touch. He must invoke chemical 

 tests, microscopic insight, and other elaborate means, to dis- 

 cover his protection. Dr. Simon says, " The zymotic malig- 

 nity is but indirectly and most imperfectly suggested to us 

 by qualities which strike the common sense, or by matters 

 which chemical analysis can specify." And he even goes so 

 much farther as to say that " waters which chemical analy- 

 sis would probably not condemn may certainly be carrying 

 in them very fatal seeds of infection ; and it is certain, that, 

 in doses in which they can fatally infect the human body, 

 they are infinitely out of reach of the most cultivated sense 

 of smell. We must not assume that the diffusion and poten- 

 cy of septic ferment in the air necessarily go pari passu with 

 the diffusion and offensiveness of the fetid gases." 1 



Thus we see that water may and does carry the germs of 

 fatal zymotic disease, which to the eye is entirely pure and 

 transparent; so that while chemistry, microscopy, and sen- 



1 Dr. Simon's Filth Diseases. 



