288 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
juices of the animal deposits — is as unfit for beast as for man. That 
the milk of cows is frequently poisoned by drinking bad water, has 
been proven in numerous instances. 
After using every pecaution within our knowledge to insure 
healthy conditions to our families, we are still largely at the mercy 
of our neighbors. For instance, the brook that sings through our 
meadows, refreshing man and beast with its clear, sparkling waters, 
may have in solution the effete matters of neighboring barn yards, 
privies or slaughter houses, thus pressing to our lips the chalice of 
death. 
Let no man deceive himself with regard to the oxidizing and dis¬ 
infecting properties of air and earth on such waters. An amount 
of exposure to these influences that would resolve the dead organic 
matters present in water into harmless mineral compounds, will 
certainly fail to destroy those constituents which are the germs of 
zyomatic diseases. Germinal matter is only destroyed by death. 
“ The most recent exj^eriments tend to show that we have been 
vastly overrating the oxidizing and disinfecting properties of air, 
water and earth. There can be no question of the fact that we are 
drinking water and breathing air contaminated by sewage and sew¬ 
age emanations, and the fact is admitted that both air and water 
may be polluted to a dangerous degree without perceptible change 
in taste, color or smell. We must not deceive ourselves, because 
poisons do not ‘ slay like the sword,’ because long habit gives us a 
certain kind of immunity from evil results, and because, in our new 
and sparsely populated country, we have a soil not yet saturated 
with the filth of centuries.” Sixth Annual Report of the Massa¬ 
chusetts State Boatd of Health. 
It is related that “ in Switzerland the dejections of typhoid cases 
were cast into a running brook irrigating a meadow, filtered through 
a mile of porous earth,, and reappearing as a spring, from which 
the people of a town drank. This acted as a source of the disease, 
and struck down more than seventeen per cent, of the inhabitants.” 
The Boston .Journal of Chemistry, in an article entitled, “The 
Lesson of the London Pump,” says: “ The good people of certain 
quarters of London have been much stirred up of late by the attacks 
of malicious sanitarians upon the reputation of the venerable town 
pumps. 
“ A famous old pump at the East End, known as ‘ Aldgate Pump,’ 
