114 CONFERENCE ON MILK PROBLEMS 



they seep into the water, and the well is infected, and thus the 

 typhoid is spread. The typhoid man may actually wash the 

 cans. If a man has typhoid fever, his hands will probably be 

 infected with typhoid bacilli, and if he washes the cans with a 

 few dipper fulls of water and swishes it around with his hands, 

 he will, of course, infect the cans. I know of one case in the 

 City of Hamilton, Ontario, where in an outbreak affecting 

 thirty-five people, two deaths were due to just such washing 

 out of the can, in a corner grocery. There was no typhoid on 

 the farm in this case. The infection came from the corner 

 grocery, presumably. It is hard to get absolutely positive 

 evidence in these cases. Typhoid outbreaks very usually re- 

 sult from using infected water for washing out the cans. 

 You know all the ways in which water can be infected. And 

 how many wells in the country are in decent condition? I was 

 going to say that ninety-nine per cent of them are infected. 

 Perhaps that is too high, but I think that it is pretty nearly 

 right. How often do you go into the country and pump 

 water where you do not hear the water running and dropping 

 back into the well again. I do not mean that little water 

 drops out of the spout in the pump, to keep it from freezing, in 

 the winter, but you can hear it dropping down through the 

 boards. A man, perhaps, has walked over the lot where the 

 typhoid material is, and then has come to the well, and the dirt 

 from his hands goes down through the boards with the water 

 into the well. Some wells in the country have only one board 

 on them, with the pump tied to it. Toads, snakes, mice and 

 everything else walk over it and go down the well. It is the 

 common drinking place for every animal on the place. You 

 can hardly find a farm well that is not infected. Sometimes 

 they are only dirt wells. I have seen them with manure piled 

 around them to keep them from freezing in the winter. That 

 is not uncommon. 



The condition of the bottles as they come back to the dealers 

 from the consumers is one of the great causes of the inspec- 

 tion of milk supply. We know that the records prove that 

 scarlet fever is spread in that way. Milk bottles come out 

 of a house in which there is scarlet fever and they are sent 

 back to the dairy, and the dairy does not wash them very care- 



