274 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



brought there from a neighboring village. The excreta 

 from this patient was washed into this stream, and between 

 the months of June and October over seventy-five cases 

 occurred, and the experience here was that those who were 

 supplied with water from a source other than the polluted 

 stream escaped. I relate this case to show that pollution of 

 a water supply alone cannot cause this or other contagious 

 disease, but that something else must be added, and that 

 something else is the disease germ 



Outbreaks of this disease have been traced to milk sup- 

 plies. A few years ago there occurred in a certain district 

 of the city of London an experience of this kind in Avhich 

 nearly three hundred cases of typhoid fever occurred. On 

 investigation it was discovered that nearly all of the people 

 sick with this disease were taking milk from the same milk- 

 man. This milk was traced back to the form where it was 

 produced, when it was learned that there had been a fatal 

 case of typhoid fever in that farm-house a few weeks before 

 this outbreak in the city, and that the excretions from the 

 bowels had been thrown into a vault that was located thirty 

 feet from the well, from which the water was procured to 

 wash the milk cans. This well was found foul with the 

 leakings from this vault. 



We had an experience much like this in Cambridge only 

 last year. In the last half of November the cases of typhoid 

 reported to the Board of Health began suddenly to increase, 

 and in the next four weeks eighty cases above the usual 

 number occurring in the corresponding time of previous 

 years were reported. Inquiry was made as to the cause of 

 this sudden and alarming increase in the number of cases 

 of this disease, when we found that seventy-four of these 

 cases were in families taking milk from one milkman, and 

 further, that the persons attacked were mostly those who 

 were in the habit of drinking more or less milk daily. As 

 this milk came from a town in New Hampshire, the State 

 Board of Health were informed of the facts, and one of 

 their officers was sent there to make further inquiry. This 

 officer learned that the milk supplied to this milkman was 

 raised on three or four different farms, and that on one of 

 them a mild case of typhoid fever had occurred a few weeks 



