5i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with the street sewer. Two of these, e and /", were drained from the 

 cellars by cement pipes four inches in diameter, the slops from the 

 houses being thrown upon the ground. The house g was drained both 

 from the cellar and by a branch pipe, untrapped, leading to an open 

 sink by the side of the kitchen door. Two of these houses were the 

 sixth and seventh in the order of invasion by the fever. There can be 

 but little doubt in the event of heavy rains and sudden change of tem- 

 perature that sewer-gas escaped into these houses. I never was able to 

 detect such an escape of gas, but I concede the fact from what I know • 

 of city sewerage. If, however, we accept the explanation of the propa- 

 gation of the fever after its first introduction in the person of Otto 

 Schmidt by means of the sewer-gas, we leave unexplained a very im- 

 portant circumstance. In the group of infected houses but three out 

 of seven were connected with the street sewer, so that in this particular 

 outbreak sewer emanations are not competent to explain the extension 

 of the disease. We may throw yet further doubt on the sewer theory 

 by the fact that in the cottages M^ containing numerous inmates, we have 

 a group of uninfected "houses, three of which were directly connected 

 with the same sewei. If we were seeking for the cause of typhoid 

 fever in defective drainage we should select these uninfected houses, as 

 they not only had untrapped sewer pipes in the kitchens, which were 

 practically the living-rooms of the families, but they were built at the 

 foot of the slope and received the surface-wash of the rich alluvium of 

 the hill to the west. Notwithstanding these unhygienic conditions and 

 the actual existence of seventeen cases of the disease on the other side 

 of the street, we find here complete immunity. When we have con- 

 sidered what this fever-poison really is, we shall be in a position to 

 understand the origin of the disease from this source. 



In seeking for a cause of the rapid spread of the fever in decom- 

 posing matter we are still at fault. The houses were all new, none of 

 them having been built longer than five years. About none of them 

 was found anything like an accumulation of refuse matter. They were 

 careless about disposing of the water from wash-tubs and what is 

 familiar to every housewife under the name of " dish-water " ; but these 

 were disposed of with more care than usual, as owing to the dry weather 

 they were scattered over the gardens. In the condition of the vaults 

 a critical inspector could find fault, yet they were in as good condition 

 as these very defective household appendages usually are. Admitting 

 a focus of infection at the house of Otto Schmidt, it is difficult to con- 

 ceive of such a wide diffusion of the virus as to suddenly establish a 

 focus at each of these seven points. This, however, is one of the least 

 of the difficulties met with in tracing the disease to the decomposition 

 of animal or vegetable matter. In typhoid fever we have a specific 

 disease ; that is, it exhibits a well-defined and uniform manner of be- 

 ginning, a culmination and decline equally well marked, and, taken 

 together, a group of symptoms and anatomical lesions that define 



