Time was, and medical men were not wanting to support 
this mad theory, when the public believed that freezing purified 
water. This comfort of the filthy has been, thank God! com¬ 
pletely exploded by patient laboratory experiments. At the office 
of Mr. Edward Hatch, Jr., chairman of the New York Mer¬ 
chants’ Association Committee on River Pollution, you may see 
a shelf full of massive jars, containing the product of ice blocks 
cut by our great ice companies from the besewaged waters near 
Catskill, Rondout, Hudson, and Albany, on the upper Hudson. 
These jars suggest aquariums so rich are they in deadly living 
organisms. 
THE DEADLY HOUSE FLY 
If you should plot out on a city map the location of the 
deaths from typhoid and intestinal diseases you would find that 
the great majority lie along the water fronts. Or if you should 
express it by means of a curve you would find that the greatest 
increase falls at the same time that the apparently harmless house 
fly is most prevalent. There is a world of meaning in these co¬ 
incidences. Latterly at the laboratory of the Aquarium in New 
York, a series of experiments have been conducted by competent 
independent scientists whose conclusions are of the greatest im¬ 
portance to such as love New York and desire her to rank once 
more with civilized cities. Dr. Daniel D. Jackson conducted the 
experiments, assisted by a competent staff and backed by the 
aforesaid River Pollution Committee composed of J. Pierpont 
Morgan, Albert Vander Veer, John Y. Cuyler, and Edward 
Hatch, Jr., ably supported by C. H. Townsend, Director of the 
New York Aquarium. It is not much to say that this committee 
of unsalaried but public-spirited men have done more for the pub¬ 
lic good in their short term of activity than the successive legis¬ 
latures at Albany since the building of the Erie Canal. This 
report demonstrates that New York is ringed round with typhoid 
—that this pest is carried by the feet of house flies on to the stalls 
in the water-side markets; that it enters the homes near the 
16 
