Miscellaneous Papers. 175 



tamiaation of the tubercle bacillus, if we may hope for a control of 

 this widespread disease. We have found out that the second and 

 third cases of tuberculosis occurring in the same family is a 

 case of the inoculation of the^well from the sick, and not that of 

 hereditary transmission; and it is not improbable that this inocula- 

 tion is very often conveyed through the medium of the domestic 

 water supply. 



In the report of President Roosevelt's Country Life Commission 

 I find the suggestive comment: ''Theoretically, the farm should be 

 the most healthful place in which to live, but it is a fact that there 

 are numberless farmhouses and rural schoolhouses that do not have 

 the rudiments of sanitary arrangement. . . . The extensive 

 spread of hookworm disease in the Gulf Atlantic states and the 

 presence of typhoid fever and malaria in many localities is more 

 than a regional question; it is nation-wide in importance." 



Dr. Worden Stiles, in a recent pamphlet issued by the Public 

 Health and Marine Hospital Service, made a tabulation of 366 

 farmhouses scattered over four southern states, and which was pre- 

 sumed to be representative of the conditions in those states. He 

 found that only 115, or 31.4 per cent, were provided with privies, 

 while 251 houses, or 68.5 per cent, had no privy. Thus a condition 

 of theoretical maximum soil pollution was occurring in 68.5 per 

 cent of the houses in question. 



When it is considered that not only hookworm disease but typhoid 

 fever are spread through night soil, the importance of this soil pol- 

 lution becomes evident. Of course, it is understood that even when 

 a privy is present soil pollution may occur in case the outhouse is 

 not properly built or not properly cleaned. 



Stiles goes on to say that among several thousand privies exam- 

 ined on farms and in various villages, the prevailing style was found 

 to be the surface privy, open in the back. Thisis the poorest com- 

 promise that can be made, for not only is the danger present of 

 contaminating the water supply in near-by wells, but soil pollution 

 naturally occurs around the outhouse, and this is increased by the 

 fact that chickens, dogs and hogs have access to the night soil and 

 scatter the infectious material around. 



Of the 121 public water supplies of Kansas, 89 are ground-water 

 supplies, 4 of which are from springs and 85 from wells. In view 

 of this large per cent of the city population, together with the 

 greater number of our entire rural population, who are dependent 

 for their domestic water-supply upon the underground waters, it 

 is at once apparent that the conservation of the ground waters of 

 the state from dangerous pollution is of state- wide importance. 



