DRINKING-WATER FROM AGRICULTURAL LANDS. 53 



hundred yards below, for domestic purposes, but had generally been 

 abandoned since it had become impure, although two families continued 

 to use it, of whom one had typhoid fever, and the other (who boiled it 

 before use) escaped. This same water continued to be used at a dairy, 

 and was the only supply there. Although there is no positive evidence 

 that the milk was diluted with it, it was acknowledged that the milk- 

 cans were washed in it. 



"From January 30th .... to February 15th, 146 persons were 

 attacked, when the epidemic declined." 



After giving further details it is stated that in the town of Bolton, 

 two miles distant, " there were fifty families attacked, of whom forty-seven 

 were supplied with milk from this same daii-y." The investigating offi- 

 cer reported that " not one household to which the milk was traced did 

 he find entirely free from the disease." 



Liebermeister, an eminent authority, says, speaking of the spread 

 of typhoid fever through water-works : " Such infection of an aqueduct 

 is most easily effected when excrements from privies containing the 

 typhoid poison are used as manure on the fields from which the aque- 

 duct receives its supply. In this way originated the epidemic in Stutt- 

 gart in the year 1872." 



Aside from the water we take into our stomachs, sanitation and sen- 

 timent alike demand that it should be wholesome. Denton says: "The 

 water used for personal ablution, and for the washing of the clothes we 

 wear, and the utensils we use in cooking, have a material though not 

 so direct an influence on our sanitary condition." The milk-can case 

 had not occurred when this was written, for, if that be true, he might 

 have put it still stronger. 



We can safely conclude that it is the quality of the sewage-matter 

 that determines the character and virulence of its poisonous effects, 

 rather than the quantity of foul matter that may be present in the 

 drinking-water, the taint from the fecal matter of one sick person 

 creating wider-spread havoc than that from hundreds of those " that 

 need no physician." 



Long before the milk-can case occurred, the English commissioners 

 said that " really there is no reason whatever to believe that the in- 

 jurious character of sewage depends, fundamentally, upon the quantity 

 of that sewage ; in all probability it far more depends upon the quality 

 of the sewage, namely, what it consists of." 



As people generally have a vague idea of what sewage consists, 

 any further than that it is a nasty mess, it may be well, in closing this 

 article, to give the definition of the term " sewage " as applied by the 

 English Rivers Pollution Commissioners. It is " any refuse from 

 human habitations that may affect the public health. . . . Sewage is a 

 very complex liquid ; a large proportion of its most offensive matters 

 is, of course, human excrement discharged from water-closets and priv- 

 ies, and also urine thrown down gully -holes. But mixed with this 



