174 Kansas Academy of Science. 



solution has accumulated to a sufficient depth, it is drawn up by the old 

 oaken bucket or modern pump, and drank. Is it any wonder that in this 

 progressive and highly civilized country 350,000 cases of typhoid occur every 

 year, with a death penalty of ten per cent?" 



It must be admitted that in locating the outbuildings and the 

 well on the average farm or in the average small town, the bearing 

 of such location on sanitation and hygiene is entirely disregarded, 

 the convenience of the family only being taken into consideration; 

 and thus the well is as often located below as above the surround- 

 ing sources of pollution, and the surface water from rains carrying 

 house slops, barnyard drainage, and filth from the near-by privy, 

 near to, or often actually into, the well, unless it has been con- 

 structed in such a way as to exclude surface contamination. 



Not only may typhoid-fever bacteria be carried into wells and 

 springs in this manner, but those organisms which cause digestive 

 disturbances and serious troubles, such as diarrhea, dysentery, 

 cholera and tuberculosis may be carried into the water used for do- 

 mestic purposes. Then, again, eggs of aniinal parasites may be 

 washed in from the surface, and it seems to be quite certain that 

 many of our intestinal parasites are thus disseminated. 



At the recent International Congress on Tuberculosis Dr. Samuel 

 Dixon, health officer of Pennsylvania, called attention to the possi- 

 bility of the dissemination of tuberculosis through drinking tuber- 

 cular-infected water. 



Rosenau has recently compiled the observations made by other 

 investigators, and concludes that the tubercular bacillus may live 

 and remain virulent in water for several months. 



Since the danger of ingesting the tubercle bacillus is now so well 

 established, its presence in drinking water assumes a special sig- 

 nificance. Drinking water may, therefore, harbor a disease equally 

 dangerous to that of typhoid fever and cholera. 



Hazen soilie time ago formulated and enunciated the following 

 theorem: "For every death from typhoid fever avoided by the 

 purification of public water supplies, two or three deaths are 

 avoided from other causes." 



The habit of promiscuous spitting of a consumptive upon the 

 ground surrounding his dwelling, on the theory that the air and sun 

 will soon make proper disposition of the sputum, is fraught with 

 quite as much danger to the users of an unprotected ground- water 

 Bupply as would be the habit of throwing the unsterilized discharges 

 of a typhoid-fever patient upon the ground surface about the house. 



We are beginning to appreciate more and more the absolute ne- 

 cessity of safeguarding our water and food supply from the con- 



