Malclen-on-Hudson felt th^scare to such an extent that one of 
our school teachers had to be released for two weeks because, 
forsooth, her home was in Kingston. 
THE HUDSON A PEST STREAM 
Am I an alarmist? Nothing is further from my mind. 
Glance through the papers for the past few months. Let me run 
over a few items which I have culled at random. 
Peekskill on the Hudson had a typhoid epidemic reported in 
the New York Times of February, 1908 — cause, tainted water 
supply. 
On February 12th of this year the New York State Depart¬ 
ment of Public Works protested that the Erie Canal had become 
a sewer and source of typhoid from the habit of using it as dump¬ 
ing ground for local garbage. The Erie Canal is 363 miles long. 
The Oswego Times of November 20, 1907, quotes Professor 
Ogden of Cornell University as saying before the Oswego County 
Medical Society that typhoid from the tainted water was ab¬ 
normally prevalent. He demonstrated this by noting that in 1895 
the typhoid death rate was only 20 per 100,000, but immediately 
afterwards the sewage of the city of Fulton was turned into the 
Oswego River and the death rate from typhoid then rose rapidly 
until in 1905 it was 90 in the 100,000. 
Here is the water drunk by Oswego, described by the offi¬ 
cial lock-tender (Oswego Times, March 9, 1908): “Rotten fish, 
snakes, dead dogs, cats, hens, rats, et cetera, are seen nearly every 
day. Mornings the lock is half full of filth !” 
Catskill, on the Hudson, only twelve miles from where I am 
writing, is in chronic state of typhoid. On March 1, 1908, the 
New York Herald reported “20 deaths within the last three days!” 
And yet this is a noted health resort. The sewage of this little 
town of only 5,000 people passes into the Catskill Creek, and 
here it mingles with the water which is drawn for drinking pur¬ 
poses from the already tainted Hudson. On this subject Dr. 
Pease, of the New York State Hygienic Laboratory, explained to 
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