186 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



Facts at present on record indicate that the stage of the ground water has an 

 unquestionable relation to the sickness rate from intermittent fever. Malarial 

 fevers are generally believed to be the invariable accompaniments of life in marshy 

 regions, and so they usually are. But it is a noteworthy fact malarial diseases 

 are neither most frequent nor most virulent when the swamps are full. It is in 

 the Jatter part of summer and early autumn, when the water is being gradually 

 evaporated, and the swampy soil is drying out here and there — when the decom- 

 position becomes active — that the fevers begin. In the winter and spring, when 

 the ground becomes saturated to the surface from the abundant precipitation, 

 and the processes of decomposition are checked, the fever disappears or, at all 

 events, the cases decrease in number and severity. 



About twenty years ago Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, of Boston, called attention to 

 the frequent connection between cases of pulmonary consumption and dampness 

 of the soil upon which the patients. lived. After a very extended and laborious 

 investigation, Dr. Bowditch formulated these two propositions: 



"First — A residence in or near a damp soil, whether that dampness be in- 

 herent in the soil itself or caused by percolation from adjacent ponds, rivers, 

 meadows, or springy soils, is one of the principal causes of consumption in Mas- 

 sachusetts, probably in New England, and possibly other portions of the globe. 



"Second — Consumption can be checked in its career, and possibly-rnay, 

 probably — prevented in som.e instances by attention to this law." 



Dr. Buchanan, of England, about the same time showed that the thorough 

 drainage of certain English cities had markedly diminished the deaths from con- 

 sumption in the drained cities. So far as the writer is aware, not a single fact 

 has been established which militates against the law laid down by Dr. Bowditch 

 and as strongly supported by the statistical researches of Dr. Buchanan, yet 

 hardly any notice has been taken of these results by physicians. Few know 

 anything of them, and still fewer seem to have made practical use of such knowl- 

 edge in advising patients. As corroborative of the views of Dr. Bowditch, the 

 rarity of consumption in high and dry mountainous districts or plateaus may be 

 cited. 



V. Diseases of Animals Probably Due to Similar Conditions of the 

 Soil. — The modern study of the sanitary relations of the soil is still in its infancy. 

 Whatever definite knowledge has been gained relates merely to physical or chem- 

 ical conditions of the soil and its atmosphere and moisture, or possibly the rela- 

 tions of these to the spread of certain diseases in human beings. But there is, 

 perhaps, a wider application that may be made of such knowledge than has been 

 he'etofore suggested. The domestic animals which form such a large proportion 

 of the wealth of this country — horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs— are liable to infec- 

 tious and contagious diseases as well as human beings, and many millions of dol- 

 lars are lost annually by the ravages of such diseases. Now, from what is known 

 of such diseases as splenic fever among cattle, and of the so-called swi?ie plague, it 

 does not appear improbable to the writer that the source of infection is a soil pol- 

 luted by the poisonous germ of the diseases, just as it seems demonstrated that chol- 



