5i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was very defective, as this portion of the city was not supplied by the 

 city water company. Well-water was therefore used for drinking and 

 cooking purposes ; while for washing, rain-water was caught either in 

 cisterns or hogsheads. The water for culinary use was obtained from 

 three sources. The houses g^ h, ^, c, and d obtained water from the 

 well t ; the houses «, b, k, from the well v ; while the people in houses 

 e and /"crossed the road and patronized the well at s. This was the 

 customary manner of supplying their wants. The source of supply at s 

 was cut off during a short time, but, as this incident gave a clew to one 

 of the most interesting facts of the investigation, I shall consign it to 

 a later period of the narrative for the sake of what the critics call the 

 dramatic unities. 



Assuming that the details of the locality are sufficiently clear to 

 enable the reader to understand the different steps of the search, I shall 

 give at once the marches and halts of the fever in its invasion, and the 

 amount of damage it inflicted on the population of our intra-mural 

 hamlet. 



As the reader knows, Otto Schmidt was taken sick on the 8th 

 of September, and, as we have given him all the importance that 

 belonged to him individually, I shall designate the other cases by 

 the letters indicating the different houses. On the 4th of October a 

 young woman was taken sick in the house g, the only case in a family 

 of four ; six days later the first case occurred in c, a family specially 

 afflicted, as here four persons were stricken, leaving but two of the fam- 

 ily, girls aged ten and fourteen years, untouched. These four cases 

 were taken sick in the following order — the 10th, 14th, and 23d of the 

 month ; on the 20th and 26th we have two other cases in the house d, 

 and two cases, at intervals of eight and twelve days later, in the house 

 h, near neighbors of the Schmidts. In the house J', at nearly the same 

 time, a case of the fever occurred. The last family attacked resided at 

 e, and here the disease seemed to linger with special animosity, the first 

 person being attacked on October 28th, and the last on November 

 8th. At this place and date the disease expended its force. In Otto 

 Schmidt's family there were two additional cases taken on the 16th and 

 20th of October. In the total there were seventeen cases ; five were 

 very light, what some authors have called " walking cases." In the 

 remaining twelve cases there were three deaths, one from an intercur- 

 rent pneumonia, or lung inflammation, one from intestinal htemorrhage, 

 and the other, without any special complication, gave way before the 

 onslaught of the poison. 



In an investigation of the kind before us we must have a knowledge 

 of all the circumstances, and therefore, even at the risk of weaving such 

 a complicated array of events around this drama of disease that it may 

 need the skill of a professional novelist to disentangle us from the 

 meshes, we must glance for a moment at the condition of the weather 

 during at least the early part of the outbreak. From about the begin- 



