FLOWERLESS PLANTS 473 



caused by rinsing the milk cans in water from a shallow well, prac- 

 tically a cesspool. The few bacteria clinging to the cans multiplied 

 rapidly in the warm milk.^ 



The typical case in which typhoid fever was distributed through 

 the water supply is that of 1885 in Plymouth, Pa., a mining town of 

 about 8500 inhabitants on the Susquehanna River. A case of 

 typhoid fever, contracted in Philadelphia, had been cared for during 

 the winter in a house standing close to a stream that flowed into the 

 town reservoir. The waste from the patient had been thrown out 

 on the snow unsterilized. When the snow melted, this was carried 

 down and mingled with the water supplied to the town. After about 

 ten days cases of typhoid fever began to appear at the rate of from 

 50 to 200 a day until 1104 had been taken ill, and as a result 114 

 died. This calamity befell the town because some one was negligent 

 or did not know how to destroy a few germs of typhoid fever or 

 prevent them from gaining access to a water supply. 



The school is a natural mingling place for the germs of 

 a community, and it is time that parents, teachers, and 

 pupils should combine to make it the most ideally clean 

 place in the neighborhood. Attention has often been 

 called to the fact that diseases of children point to the 

 school as the great center of infection, I dare say that 

 the statistics of any town or city will show this ; and until 

 the feather duster is banished and intelligent cleanliness 

 is secured, this will go on. Fig. 195 is plotted from the 

 monthly reports of the Worcester Board of Health for the 

 three children's diseases specified. 



Why do we go to the expense of providing tools for 

 manual training, household furniture, and materials for 

 sewing, cooking, and domestic science, and leave the most 

 important work of all — cleanliness of the schoolroom — to 



1 Prof. Herbert E. Smith. Report on the Stamford Typhoid Fever Epi- 

 demic. Published by the State Board of Health, New Haven, Conn. 



