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diffusing any during its operation ; and where the water system is 
not in use, these objects ought still, as far as possible, to be secured. 
In the absence of water-closets, any reasonable alternative system 
ought to include the following :—First, proper catchment apparatus ; 
and second, proper arrangement for scavenge. Under the head 
of one or more of the causes named, will be found the true explan- 
ation of outbreaks and prevalence of entero-zymotic disease in 
different districts of this county. 
There is another well established fact, that filth infection may 
be transmitted even on a large scale from district to district in 
particular articles of food, and especially in the article of milk. 
In proof of this, I shall quote an extract from the report of Dr. 
Simon, Medical Officer of the Privy Council and Local Govern- 
ment Board, which says: “In 1870, Dr. Ballard, now of this 
department, but who at that time was working with high character 
as Officer of Health for the parish of Islington, was able to show 
that an outbreak of Enteric fever, which had attacked in ten weeks 
seventy families, and one hundred and seventy-five persons in part 
of his district, coincided with the use of milk supplied from a 
particular dairy, where, shortly before the outbreak, there had been 
cases of Enteric fever, and where, apparently, the infected house 
drainage must have had easy access to an underground water-tank 
upon the premises. There could be little doubt as to what in this 
epidemic had been the infectant. Since Dr. Ballard’s connection 
with this department, it has twice happened to him to be able very 
clearly to trace the same method of infection at work in consider- 
able outbreaks of Enteric fever, which he has been investigating— 
one in 1872 at Armley, in the Borough of Leeds, and the other in 
1873 at Moseley and Balsall Heath, near Birmingham.” 
It is, therefore, quite clear that, while we are subject at 
almost any moment to breathe contaminated atmosphere, or 
partake of water impregnated with deleterious matter, we are at the 
same time liable to be brought in contact with similar impurities in 
our daily food. In my own district, there are many farmsteads 
where a pump or well is situate in the yard adjoining the manure 
