142 BACTERIA IN WATER 
the milk, where they find conditions for rapid growth, and the 
farmer, wholly unconscious of having done anything out of the 
way, distributes the bacilli to the neighboring community which he 
supplies with milk. A typhoid fever epidemic breaks out which 
remains a mystery, unless some one is sharp enough to trace it to 
its source in the farmer’s well. 
Such is not an imaginary instance, but represents a type of 
typhoid epidemic many times repeated. It is simply illustrative 
of one of the sources of typhoid epidemics which has been found 
common, and many instances of almost exactly these conditions 
could be given. Nearly three hundred typhoid epidemics have 
been traced to milk, many of which are directly attributable to 
the well. The trouble arises partly from carelessness, but chiefly 
from ignorance. Certainly, for his own health and that of the 
community which he supplies with milk, every farmer should be 
impressed with the fact that the problem of his well is most critical. 
It should be scrupulously guarded, and should be located in such 
a place as to render drainage from the privy vault an impossibility. 
The safest thing would be to give up the well entirely and depend 
upon some spring or reservoir; but where this is impossible the 
well should be on higher ground than the privy vault, or be re- 
moved from it not less than one hundred feet. 
Unfortunately, everyone who has been brought up on a farm 
is likely to feel that this danger is imaginary, at least for his 
own particular home. He has drunken water from the well all 
his life, and so have his fathers before him, and he cannot be 
convinced of any danger therein. But the fact remains that many 
a well of exactly this sort has been the cause of typhoid. Though 
used for years without suspicion it has, nevertheless, been a means 
of death. The trouble gives no warning when it comes, and the 
well which has been pure for years may suddenly begin to dis- 
tribute typhoid fever bacilli without the least suspicion on the 
part of those using it. In ignorance the farmer not only drinks 
the water himself, but distributes the germs to the city, insisting 
