then drinks it—with the result that the Dispatch recently' esti¬ 
mated that the cost of typhoid and its treatment in three years in 
Pittsburg was $3,335,000. The city has been awakened to this 
preventable loss and now is putting in filters which will be in 
operation for the whole city by next fall. But the sewage will 
come down yet, even if purified from the drinking water. 
On the Ohio River, popularly known as a thousand miles 
of typhoid, Cincinnati is better off than Pittsburg because in 
time rivers purify themselves to a certain extent. The trouble is 
that Nature is not given this chance. The rate is high in Cincin¬ 
nati because the water has been known to be so dirty that some 
under-water plants couldn’t grow in it for lack of light! 
The heritage of Pittsburg and Cincinnati is that of Louis¬ 
ville—such an inheritance as puts it fourth on the list. Some four 
and a half million people send sewage to Louisville. Frankfort, 
on the Kentucky River that empties into the Ohio just above 
Louisville is only a few miles from the latter city. There are 
other cities, also, on both sides of the Ohio. And so it goes. 
Next comes the Illinois River emptying into the Ohio, and 
if we hark back on this we come to the Desplaines, then to the 
Chicago Drainage Canal, and then to 2,000,000 people pouring 
sewage into it. Down it goes, “purified” by being mixed with 
water from Lake Michigan pumped in for the purpose. That 
lake water, too, may be polluted. At any rate it performs the 
valuable service of hastening an otherwise slow stream on its way 
of destruction. At last the Ohio swings into the Mississippi 
itself. The main river has brought down the pollution of Min¬ 
neapolis and St. Paul, and a score of other large cities. The 
Missouri has brought down the sewage of a million and a half 
other people. Altogether some ten million people have combined 
their sewage at this one point. Then St. Louis drinks it—St. 
Louis whose death rate due to typhoid, from a fair average dur¬ 
ing the five years before the drainage canal was opened, rose 
seventy-three per cent, during the five years afterward. The 
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