Health Officer Sharkey is reported in the Albany, New York, 
Times-Union as stating that the number of typhoid cases iii 
Rensselaer, near Albany, was unprecedented—and no wonder, for 
Albany and Troy both gather ice that is frozen sewage. 
The typhoid pest approaches under any disguise which con¬ 
ceals filth water, milk, house flies, and ice being to-aay the most 
tangible. The pious people of the Middle Ages who burned at the 
stake and otherwise lynched men suspected of spreading pesi 
germs differed but slightly from ourselves, for we fly from com¬ 
mon sense to specious drugs and medical recipes for relief, shut¬ 
ting our eyes to the plain teachings of God in a world of natural 
wonders. We Americans are the only people on the face of the 
earth who persistently make ice an article of daily diet. So 
rooted is this pernicious habit that even our laborers at Panama 
are provided with it. The natives of hot countries need no ice. 
In the various British and Dutch colonies of the tropical Indies_ 
even Borneo—I found no demand for ice, and certainly so far 
as relative physical health is concerned it is not we ice eaters who 
have ground for boasting. 
The first thing noted by a foreigner to our shores is the bell¬ 
boy with his tinkling load, running from room to room distribut¬ 
ing little cargoes of indigestion under the euphemistic name of 
ice pitcher. According to the U. S. Geological Survey report 
of 1902 (on Sewage Pollution) the Hudson River ice crop was 
then between four and five millions of tons, more than enough to 
provide one ton apiece for each New Yorker and plenty to spare. 
This ice comes, practically all, from the neighborhood of 
sewers anywhere between Poughkeepsie and Troy. The report 
just quoted regards the Hudson River ice crop as worth between 
seven and eight millions of dollars, according to the harvest—an 
amount of money that indicates roughly the interest in this matter 
taken by the owners of ice hou.ses who one day clamor a.gainst 
the sewers and the next assure the public that their particular 
ice is purity itself. 
15 
