TREATMENT OF CHOLERA 207 



throughout its entire length and a very diseased condition of the 

 contents of the bowel. 



Suspicion was first directed to the grass in the field, it being 

 believed that it perhaps contained a poisonous weed of some un- 

 known kind. By some chance, however, it was decided to investi- 

 gate the condition of the well. The cover was removed, and, lo and 

 behold, the surface of the water was found to be a floating mass of 

 dead animal bodies. There was removed from this well fifteen 

 rabbits, one cat, two dogs and a half-dozen rats, and several mice. 

 This mass of stinking, decomposing dead bodies had been rotting 

 here for weeks, and the toxic matter so generated had been carried 

 to the stomach of the cattle through the water. It was no wonder 

 that they developed an inflammation of the bowels and died. 

 The wonder is that the entire herd was not wiped out by the poisons 

 so formed. 



Losses from impure water are by no means always confined to 

 the hogs and cattle on the premises. Typhoid fever, one of the 

 most dread diseases to which man is heir, is nearly always trans- 

 mitted through impure water. Wells so located that they are 

 below the level of outhouses constantly receive the seepage from 

 these cess-pools, and become breeding places for the typhoid 

 bacilli which causes the disease in man. Anyone drinking this 

 water is exceedingly liable to develop typhoid, and large outbreaks 

 have been started in just this manner. 



A few years ago in eastern Iowa a farm hand came to work on a certain 

 farm. He had come out from one of the nearby cities where he had been 

 employed in a large factory. A few weeks after his arrival he began to show 

 signs of sickness, which were not very marked at first. He gradually became 

 more and more indisposed, and finally was down sick in bed. The case 

 eventually developed into one of true typhoid. 



On this farm, as is usually the case, the house was located at the highest 

 point on the farm, and the well located about a hundred yards further down the 

 slope toward the barn. The outhouse was located a few yards back of the 

 house. The discharges from the patient were emptied in the outhouse all 

 through the attack of the disease. The case ran the usual course, and finally 

 attacked two other members of the same family. 



During the following summer a threshing crew was working on this farm 

 for two or three days, and while there drank freely of the water obtained from 

 this well. About three weeks later a number of the men who had been in this 

 crew began to feel indisposed, and within a month nearly a score of cases of 

 genuine typhoid had developed as a result of this one contaminated well, and 



