1 68 AGRICULTURAL BACTERIOLOGY. 



to infect the well. The rest of the occupants of the farm who 

 drink the water are exposing themselves to this disease. But 

 worse than this, the farmer rinses his milk pails in the water 

 from the well and subsequently puts his warm milk in the cans. 

 The typhoid bacilli which were in the well, thus get into the 

 milk, where they find conditions for rapid growth, and the 

 farmer, wholly unconscious of having done anything out of 

 the way, distributes the bacilli to the neighboring community 

 which he supplies with milk. A typhoid fever epidemic breaks 

 out which remains a mystery, unless some one is sharp enough 

 to trace it to its source in the farmer's well. 



Such is not an imaginary instance but represents a type 

 of typhoid epidemic many times repeated. It is simply illus- 

 trative of one of the sources of typhoid epidemics which 

 has been found common, and many instances of almost ex- 

 actly these conditions could be given. In the last fifteen years 

 over fifty typhoid epidemics of considerable extent have been 

 traced to milk, many of which are directly attributable to 

 the well. The trouble arises partly from carelessness, but 

 chiefly from ignorance. Certainly, for his own health and 

 that of the community which he supplies with milk, every 

 farmer should be impressed with the fact that the problem of 

 his well is the most critical one on his farm. It should be 

 scrupulously guarded, and should be located in such a place 

 as to render drainage from the privy vault an impossibility. 

 The safest thing would be to give up the well entirely and de- 

 pend upon some spring or reservoir ; but where this is im- 

 possible the well should be on higher ground than the privy 

 vault, or be removed from it not less than two hundred feet. 



Unfortunately, everyone who has been brought up on a farm 

 is likely to feel that this danger is imaginary, at least for his 

 own particular home. He has drunken water from the well 

 all his life, and so have his fathers before him, and he cannot 

 be convinced of any danger therein. But the fact remains that 



