The Water Supply of Albany. 



169 



of New York ; and an expert officer examined the history 

 of the outbreak and the locality and predicted that a cer- 

 tain hydrant which supplied the victims with drinking 

 water communicated at some point with house drains or the 

 sewer. The water pipe was examined, and at a distance 

 from the hydrant a house drain was found to communicate 

 with the same. The necessary repairs were made and the 

 epidemic ceased." 



The Medical Department of the London Local Govern- 

 ment Board, have just issued an important report on the 

 cause of typhoid or enteric fever in London : of the vari- 

 ous ways in which water may be made the vehicle for dis- 

 tributing the fever. The report gives the following as 

 illustrations : 



At Terling Place ten persons were attacked with enteric 

 fever, and all these persons, and these only of a large family 

 drank water from a particular well into which it was dis- 

 covered that a cesspool leaked. 



At Dickens Bonet in Essex, a certain well was polluted 

 and out of eighty-eight drinkers from that well, forty-two 

 persons were attacked ; while only one other person out 

 of a population of two hundred and six in the village, was 

 attacked. At Nunnery, a village in Somersetshire, hav- 

 ing a population of eight hundred and thirty-two, Dr. 

 Ballard records seventy-six cases of enteric fever as occur- 

 ing in four months. The cases were limited in a remark- 

 able way to families who obtained their water supply from 

 a small rivulet which received the sewage of several houses 

 up stream. At Hawkesbury Upton, in Gloucestershire, a 

 village of six hundred and forty-seven inhabitants, within 

 a short period ninety-five cases and fourteen deaths from 

 enteric fever occurred in groups, following the successive 

 pollution of different wells in the village. Burbage,a village 

 in Leicestershire, as recorded by Dr. Guinne Harris had 

 an outbreak of enteric fever from the same cause last year. 



Trans. Dm.] 22 



