272 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



sewer or drain-pipes where these disease-causing germs may 

 abound, and that may be readily carried up with the sewer- 

 gas directly into the house, and so find ready access to its 

 inmates. 



There is another means by which contagion may be com- 

 municated from one to others, and that is through the 

 m.edium of a water or food supply. This danger seems 

 greater in cases of typhoid fever than in any of the other 

 diseases we are considerinsf that are common to New Eng- 

 land. In typhoid fever the disease is in the lower part of 

 the bowels, and is an ulceration of some of the small glands 

 that are situated there, and for this reason excretions from 

 the bowels are the great source of danger in this disease. 



How water and food supplies may become contaminated, 

 and be the means of most serious attacks of this disease is 

 well illustrated by the following well authenticated cases. 

 Dr. Budd in his work on typhoid fever, relates the follow^ 

 iug. In one of the public houses of one of the country 

 villages in England, there was held a ball, attended by one 

 hundred and forty people, many of them coming from the 

 adjoining counties and fi'om ditferent directions. During 

 the evening many of the party partook freely of lemonade, 

 and other light drinks prepared with water drawn from a 

 well, the water supply of the house where the ball was held. 

 AVithin the next ten or fifteen days, over eighty of these 

 people were attacked with typhoid fever. Such an outbreak 

 of course caused great excitement, and an investigation was 

 had but with no satisfactory results. Later, Dr. Budd visited 

 the house for the purpose of investigation himself, when he 

 found that a short time before the ball there had been a 

 case of typhoid fever in this very inn, and that the excre- 

 tions of the bowels had been thrown in a vault a few feet 

 away from the well, supplying the water for the cool drinks 

 used by the people attending the ball. Further examination 

 showed that the water was contaminated with sewaire. The 

 connection between this contaminated well and this epidemic 

 seemed to be clear and conclusive. 



Four or five years ago there was reported in the daily 

 papers in New York, Boston and other cities, the outbreak 

 of a terrible pestilence in one of the larger towns of Pennsyl- 



