58 Bacteria in Relation to Country Life 



erences were made to drinking-water as the cause oi 

 malaria and diarrhea. Towards the middle of the cen- 

 tury the accumulation of recorded facts prepared the 

 way for the belief expressed in 1855 by Doctor Michel 

 in France, that there is a seeming relation between 

 the character of drinking-water and the prevalence of 

 typhoid fever. 



The bacillus of typhoid isolated by Eberth in 1880, 

 and studied in greater detail by Gafky in 1884, is now 

 generally regarded as the specific cause of the disease 

 (Fig. 16). The organism has been repeatedly isolated 

 from the stools of typhoid patients, and a number of in- 

 stances are on record when the bacillus was directly 

 isolated from polluted water. The germ of cholera was 

 isolated by Koch in 1884 from the stools of cholera 

 patients, and from the intestinal contents of persons who 

 died from the disease (Fig. 16). He also found this germ 

 in water from a tank in India. Both of these organisms 

 have been shown to invade the human system through 

 the medium of drinking-water, and the latter has, there- 

 fore, become the object of more thorough care and 

 •inspection in all civilized communities. 



Epidemics of cholera and typhoid fever. — The study 

 of the history of epidemics of cholera and typhoid is 

 both interesting and instructive, as marking the growth 

 of our knowledge of these diseases from the standpoint 

 of sanitation. Europe and America have had no serious 

 outbreak of cholera for many years, but epidemics of 

 typhoid are, unfortunately, still too frequent. The re- 

 lation between typhoid fever and drinking-water may 

 be readily traced in the epidemics that have occurred 



