TYPHOID FEVER.

Thames Advertiser, Volume IX, Issue 2251, 15 January 1876, Page 2

TYPHOID FEVER.

The newspapers daily contain articles, reports, or letters on the above important subject. With your sanction I will add a few lines., Every body wishes to bo healthy, aud cortainly to avoid such things as might bring him disease and suffering. Wo must admit that there is a tangible cause for disease, and it is our duty to seek for it. Much has also been said and written on bad Bmells, want of ventilation, and drainage, &o. Mr Simon, the. medical officer of the Privy Council, says-" It is I believe a matter of absolute demonstration that in the oldepidemies when the south side of London suffered so dreadfully from cholera, the great cause of the immense mortality there was the badness of the water then , distributed in those districts of Another epidemie (1866) Mr Simon" speaks of, and ho clearly shows "that the mortality in this year fe'l in the east of London; and was distinctly confined to a district supplied by water drawn-froma foul part of the river Lea, and containing sewage impurity." We-must all remember the famous Golden Square case. In the course of six days five hundred persons died of cholera around Golden Square. It was found that nearly all thp people who died bad been drinking water from a pump in Broad-street, which was on examination found 'to communicate with a cesspool in an ad joining house. The Prince of Wale's suffered from the disease known as typhoid or enteric fever —it is generally supposed that it was caused either by drinking impure water, or by breathing the foul gases generated in drains. The preventable nature of this disease is so generally acknowledged, that when an outbreak of typhoid fever occurs in England, a duly qualified man is at once sent to inquire into the causes of the origin and spread of the disease. Dr Buchanan was thus sent down in Sep. tember, 1867, to Guillord to examine and report. I quote from the latter. "Anew well had been sunk to supply the higher part of the town, and. that water from this well waa supplied to abo.ut 330 houses for one day only, the 17th August. On the 28th of August there were several cases of typhoid fever in these houses, although they are all situated in the highest and healthiest [district in the town. The number daily increased, and there were in all about.6oo cases and 21 deaths. With three exceptions, all the persons attacked in in August ond September had drank the water exceptionally supplied for one day only as just stated. s lfc was subsequently found that a sower ran within ten feet of the well, and that the sewage leaked through the joints of tho brickwork and saturated the soil just above the spring whioh supplied the well."

Dr Parkes, professor of sanitary science, has collected a good deal of evidence as to diseases which may ho communicated by water. One remarkable case he relates is that of a young ladies' sohool, where infiltration of sewage into the well supplying (he house with water was shown to be tho cause of a severe outbreak of typhoid fever. These cases and hundreds of others prove to us that this disease may be.produced, and have been produced, bjr drinking impure water. . Cn this point tho Royal Commission on the water supply seems to have little if indeed any doubt. Tho danger appears when' the water becomes impregnated with animal decomposing matter, ond with sewage matters generally. Now, although the chemist, as also the microscopist, cannot at once (and letme add tho physicianand the physiologist) tell us whether the water contains typhoid. poison, or whether the water contains cholera poison, or whether the water contains the poison of any other particular disease; though this has never yet been done, they are able to tell the differenco* between a pure water and a water which contains animal impurity; and if tho water contains the germs of typhoid, or simply animal excrcmentitous matter, it is unfit to drink. We are indobted to Dr Frankland for the means of estimating, tho sewage contamination, and although tho process of detection is an indirect one, nevertheless it does give us the •nitrogenous portions which aro thrown off by the decomposition of animal bodies, the liquid and solid products of which get into the drains, thence perhaps into the otherwise purewater. In regard to tho air wo breathe, it is most interesting to refer to the. wellknown experiments ofDr Angus Smith relative to the amount of organic mattor in the air, and at the risk;of being eoii-sidereda-bore.rwjir give, you some of .the results:— .••..,'• ;."■.■■ ■ • ' ' Organic Matter, St. Bernard's Hospice- - 28 Hill hi Lancashire - ./ •- 2.8 Lake in Lucerne ■ '• Id At sea, 60 miles out • •• 3.6 Kew Gardens ■ ■ 10.' Pinchley ;: .-, _• 15/ ■ London .Bridge < - 42.;/. Soutluvark Bridge " -. i ' - 55. In Manchester, whero some of us have smelt the Irwell, ho found 73 parts of oi'ganio matter-in tho air: of a pigstyo, 70'. There has been much talk;about:, sewer gases, but there 4s no'doubt whatever that the breathing of foul air" not only lowers the general tone of the body, but that-actual danger to life ensues from. the bringing these impure gases, which may oqntain the germs of specific disease, into our houses. It is, however, right to state that the public, and public bodies,

arevory apt to run to extremes; at one time we don't think at all about the matter, at other times every bad smell, every little pool in the street .is, they say, sure to cause fever. : That effluvia/and bad . smells from decomposing animal matter _ are not invariably, or even generally, -' accompanied by,.fevers, we know too well; but when the epidemic does come, it takes rpbt (as a rule) best in the most stinking and worst-drained parts of a district. In tbiis district we have a very excellent water supply, and it behoves • those in power and authority to examine . with care the character of the water supplied ..to those who have already been attacked and who may yet be so. When I say to examine the water, I mean to imply not a.chemical analysis, but the proper examination of the" well, if a well it be, the distance the cesspit or closet may be from it, whence goes the overflow, the surface drainage also; does this ' go into the well, does the water, under the microscope, appear pretty free from solid matter, &c. ? Such questions as these fully, answered would assist the ' generalcause.—[Communicated.]