are really getting
control of typhoid is shown by the, at first sight, singular and
decidedly unexpected fact that it is no longer a disease of cities, but
of the country. The death-rate per thousand living in the cities of the
United States is lower than in the rural districts. For instance, the
mortality in the State of Maryland, outside of Baltimore, is two and
one-half times as great as that in the city itself. Our period of
greatest outbreak in the large cities is now the month of September,
when city dwellers have just returned from their vacations in the pure
and healthful country, bringing the bacilli in their systems.

The moral is obvious. Great cities are developing some sort of a
sanitary conscience. Farmers and country districts have as yet little or
none. Bad as our city water often is, and defective as our systems of
sewage, they cannot for a moment compare in deadliness with that most
unheavenly pair of twins, the shallow well and the vault privy. A more
ingenious combination for the dissemination of typhoid than this
precious couple could hardly have been devised. The innocent householder
sallies forth, and at an appropriate distance from his cot he digs two
holes, one about thirty feet deep, the other about four. Into the
shallower one he throws his excreta, while upon the surface of the
ground he flings abroad his household waste from the back stoop. The
gentle rain from heaven washes these various products down into the soil
and percolates gradually into the deeper hole. When the interesting
solution has accumulated to a sufficient depth, it is drawn up by the
old oaken bucket or modern pump, and drunk. Is it any wonder that in
this progressive and highly civilized country three hundred and fifty
thousand cases of typhoid occur every year, with a death penalty of ten
per cent? Counting half of these as workers, and the period of illness
as two months, which would be very moderate estimates, gives a loss of
productive working time equivalent to thirty thousand years. Talk of
"cheap as dirt"! It is the most expensive thing there is.

Typhoid still abundantly earns its old name of "military fever," and its
sinister victories in war are even more renowned than its daily triumphs
in peace. Strange as it may seem, the deadliest enemies of the soldier
are not bullets but bacilli, and sewage is mightier than the sword. For
instance, in the Franco-Prussian War, typhoid alone caused sixty per
cent of all the