WEST VIRGINIA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 33 



6 to 10 days in water of ordinary temperature. That affords 

 them time to move from the source to the mouth of any West 

 Virginia stream. Typhoid is only one of many diseases which 

 enter homes by way of the water spigots. Contamination from 

 a single cholera patient on the Elbe river in Germany in 1892 

 infected 17,020 persons of whom 8,605 died. In 1903 the Ex- 

 periment Station at Morgantown published a report on rural 

 water supply with analyses by Prof. C. D. Howard. A single 

 item in that report will suffice to indicate the condition of some 

 of the water then drawn from natural streams. On June 19th. 

 when the Monongahela was as pure as it could be expected to 

 be at any time, it was found that a single gallon of water con- 

 tained enough bacteria to supply one healthy specimen to every 

 man, woman and child in West Virginia, and 300,000 left over. 

 Three days later when a shower had washed a fresh supply into 

 the river, a gallon held enough to give one bacterium to every 

 person in the United States and the British Isles. 



"There is no reason to suppose that the Monongahela was 

 worse than some other rivers of the state, and they are all prob- 

 ably much worse now than they were then. No improvement 

 is possible as long as they remain the open channels through 

 which the country's sewage is carried on its mission of pollu- 

 tion. 



"The opinion which is somewhat prevalent that running 

 streams purify themselves has no fact for its basis. It is true 

 that sunshine, if hot enough, may kill many of the germs as they 

 pass over the shoals, but beyond that, running water is more 

 dangerous than still water, because it keeps the germs from set- 

 tling to the bottom, and as long as they remain alive they are an 

 active menace. Deep pools in rivers do more to purify the water 

 than is done by all the intervening riffles and shoals. The set- 

 tling reservoir at Washington, D. C, precipitates to the bottom 

 85 per cent of the impurities that come in with the Potomac 

 water. Disease germs are more often products of land than of 

 the rivers, and unless they are washed into the stream they are 

 not apt to get in. 



"Germs which are capable of producing malignant diseases, 

 such as fever, diphtheria and others, are not the only dangers 

 3 



