CONTAGIOUS DISEASES. 273 



vania of eight or nine thousand inhabitants. A physician 

 was sent from Philadelphia to investigate the cause of these 

 reports. This physician found by post-mortem examina- 

 tions that the disease in question was typhoid fever. He 

 also found that this town obtained its water supply from two 

 sources. One, a public supply furnished by a small moun- 

 tain stream, the water being stored in basins and carried to 

 the consumers in the usual way by under-ground pipes, the 

 other, from individual wells. The epidemic was confined 

 almost wholly to the people using this public water supply. 

 Continuing his inquiries, this physician found that a part of 

 the 3^ear this mountain stream did not supply a sufficient 

 quantity of water for the part of the town using it, and at 

 such times it was pumped directly from the Susquehanna 

 River into the water mains. Up to the 30th day of March, 

 and some time before, the public water supply was from this 

 source, but on that day the water was let on from one of the 

 basins supplied by the mountain stream. On the 9th of 

 April, or ten days after, the first case of typhoid fever 

 occurred. On the 10th, two or three more, and from that 

 time they increased with such frightful rapidity that in a 

 few days over 900 cases were reported, and subsequently 

 over 100 deaths occurred. Further investigation revealed 

 the fact that some time before this outbreak there had 

 been a case of typhoid fever in a house near this mountain 

 stream, supplying water to the stricken part of the town, 

 and that the stools from this patient had been thrown on the 

 snow near the bank of this stream, and in a sudden freshet 

 caused by the melting of the snow and rain, these excre- 

 tions from the bowels, loaded with the germs of the disease, 

 had been swept into the current and carried to the basin 

 below, causing the terrible results we have seen, and the 

 reports to which I have alluded, that some new and fatal 

 pestilence had appeared. 



Another case is reported where a water supply was the 

 cause of an outbreak of typhoid fever, A little English 

 village of about 800 people was supplied with water from a 

 small stream running through the town. Although this 

 stream was known to be polluted with sewage, and had been 

 for years, no cases of this fever occurred until a case was 



