IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCE 
117 
“That the reduction of infant mortality and deaths from diar- 
rhoeal diseases was not due to other conditions seems probable from 
the fact that in the neighboring city of Troy, where the water 
supply was not changed, there was no such diminution during the 
same period.” 
The following table by the same author is a summary of the 
typhoid fever death rates in different cities and towns of the 
country which used ground waters or filtrated waters : 
STATE 
Number of Cities 
and Towns 
Averaged 
Number of 
Years Averaged 
Average Typhoid 
Fever Death-rate 
per 100,000 
Maine 
2 
5 
6.4 
Massachusetts 
23 
5 
15.8 
Connecticut 
4 
5 
9.5 
New York 
13 
5 
24.7 
New Jersey 
10 
1 
20.5 
Pennsylvania 
5 
1 
31.8 
Ohio 
22 
5 
32.4 
The subject of water supply for rural communities will become 
more and more important as the years go by. Dr. H. B. Stone and 
C. P. Moat, in making a study of the ground waters of Vermont, 
call attention to the contamination of the ground waters because of 
the long use of wells and buildings. “The Vermont farm and 
farmhouse are old; generation after generation has in turn added 
its dejecta to the soil which has gradually been permeated to a 
considerable distance so that we find the unmistakable marks of 
sewage, recent or remote, in many of these old wells which are 
considered by the users to be as unimpeachable as when they were 
pronounced good by their ancestors.” They find that the total 
death-rate of typhoid fever in that State is 31.1. Of the urban 
population, the rate is 27.8, while among the rural population it 
reaches 31.7, per 100,000. It is always safer, in a densely populated 
country, to use filtered water in preference to water from a stream 
that passes through a country where there are some chances of 
water pollution. It is safer to allow the water to be stored and 
thus, as has been well shown by Dr. Sedgwick, the organisms 
will diminish. “Conversely, if a running water such as we have in 
a river can be converted into a quiet water, — as in a reservoir, — 
just such purification as we have discovered in Burlington may re- 
sult. This is, indeed, what takes place, fortunately, with water 
derived from polluted watersheds and stored in huge reservoirs, — 
great and often adequate purification may . be established by pro- 
longed quiescence, or storage. There is every reason to believe 
