no doubt that typhoid-fever, cholera, and dysentery may
be caused by water rendered impure by the evacuations passed in those
diseases, and as simple diarrhoea seems also to be largely caused by
animal organic [matter in] suspension or solution, it is evident how
necessary it is to be quick-sighted in regard to the possible impurity of
water from incidental causes of this kind. Therefore all tanks and
cisterns should be inspected regularly, and any accidental source of
impurity must be looked out for. Wells should be covered; a good coping
put round to prevent substances being washed down; the distances from
cess-pools and dung-heaps should be carefully noted; no sewer should be
allowed to pass near a well. The same precautions should be taken with
springs. In the case of rivers, we must consider if contamination can
result from the discharge of fecal matters, trade refuse, &c."
Now, suppose all such precautions have been disregarded. Suppose, as is
most usual, that the well is dug near the kitchen-door,--probably between
kitchen and barn; the drain, if there is a drain from the kitchen, pouring
out the dirty water of wash-day and all other days, which sinks through
the ground, and acts as feeder to the waiting well. Suppose the
manure-pile in the barnyard also sends down its supply, and the privies
contribute theirs. The water may be unchanged in color or odor: yet none
the less you are drinking a foul and horrible poison; slow in action, it
is true, but making you ready for diphtheria and typhoid-fever, and
consumption, and other nameless ills. It is so easy to doubt or set aside
all this, that I give one case as illustration and warning of all the
evils enumerated above.
The State Board of Health for Massachusetts has long busied itself with
researches on all these points, and the case mentioned is in one of their
reports. The house described is one in Hadley, built by a clergyman. "It
was provided with an open well and sink-drain, with its deposit-box in
close proximity thereto, affording facility to discharge its gases in the
well as the most convenient place. The cellar was used, as country cellars
commonly are, for the storage of provisions of every kind, and the
windows were never opened. The only escape for the soil-moisture and
ground-air, except that which was absorbed by the drinking-water, was
through the crevices of the floors into the rooms above. After a few
months' residence in the house, the clergym
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