124 Drinking' Water and some of its Impurities, 



A short time since, on removing a building in Schenec- 

 tady, no fewer than five vaults were found on a lot of ground 

 only 25 feet by 100. Into such soil as this the wells are dug, 

 and the water in some of them has become nothing but 

 sewage in a concentrated form. There are always cases of 

 typhoid fever in the city, and an unhealthy season increases 

 their number at an alarming rate. 



Samples 5 and 6 were from the same well, the former 

 taken just before it was cleaned, and the latter about six 

 weeks after. There is a vault a short distance from the 

 well with which it is evidently in direct communication, 

 the chlorine being more in the second analysis than in the 

 first. No. 7 was furnished by a physician who was called to 

 prescribe for a man sick with typhoid fever. He suspected 

 that the cause lay in the water, although the man affirmed 

 that it was the best water in the city. The analysis shows, 

 besides ammonia, organic nitrogen, and nitrates in large 

 quantities, an amount of chlorine nearly three times as 

 great as that in common sewage. 



In 'Eo. 8 the nitrates and chlorine were very high, es- 

 pecially. the former. The well is only eighteen feet from 

 a vault. 



No. 1 was received from a physician at Albany. He writes 

 as follows concerning it. " I send you a specimen of well- 

 water which I think has caused three cases of severe illness, 

 two of which were fatal. I was called some months after 

 these cases, to see a patient who had a high fever (Temp. 

 105°. pulse 140) with diarrhoea and nausea, in whom I 

 could find no disease of any organ to account for the fever. 

 I forbid her use of the well-water and she commenced to 

 improve and is now, after the lapse of two weeks, nearly 

 well. Since I saw her, she has been drinking filtered rain- 

 water. The well in this case is within ten feet of a privy- 

 vault and the two have been thus located for twenty years." 



These examples show us how nearly impossible it is to 



