DYSINTERIC COMPLAINTS. 185 
In calling the attention of one of the military officials at Nas- 
sau to this subject, and to the paragraph we have quoted, he 
said : 
“Soon after my first arrival in Nassau, I was, in common with 
some other officers of the garrison, troubled with severe griping 
pains in the bowels, which I suspected was caused by impure 
water, and I caused the water in the cisterns to be drawn off. 
At the bottom I found a dark colored, dirty deposit, two to 
three inches thick. I had the cisterns thoroughly cleaned, and 
the result was the griping pains disappeared.” 
When in April, 1879, we returned to Jacksonville, Fla., we 
learned that dysenteric complaints had made their appearance 
among the guests of the St. James Hotel, that the water in the 
cisterns of the hotel was discovered to be very impure, and offen- 
sive to the taste and smell. In Jacksonville as well as at Nassau 
there had been a long season of dry weather, so that the cisterns 
were drawn down low, and the dirt at the bottom no doubt in 
both places poisoned the water—hence the sickness that followed 
its use. 
Upon our return to the north we sent the substance of the 
foregoing facts to the proprietor of the Royal Victoria Hotel, 
and he promised to have the cisterns of his hotel emptied and 
cleaned. | 
Thus disease and death sometimes lurk, and wait, and watch 
for victims, where they are looked for least. While at Nassau, 
in 1880, we had no evidence of the existence of any of the dysen- 
teric troubles that existed in 1879. Spring water is utilized at 
the hotel for some purposes, and a bountiful supply is carried to 
tanks elevated over the water-closets by means of a steam pump, 
‘and a suspicion existed when the bowel: complaints made their 
appearance, that some of it had been used for cooking purposes, 
The hotel officials, however, denied that it had been so used. - 
