Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-05-26
DISEASE IN TOWN.

With strangers and travellers our tow
has the reputation of being one of tn
most charming places anywhere TO b
found. Its climate is delightful and tn
mountains which surround it are OF :
majesty and grandeur rarely surpassed
Our entire valley is charming, and tht
beauty OF its landscape is almost withou
a rival. We remember to have con
versed with an English gentleman once
whose life had been mostly passed IL
travel, and he said he could
only recall two or three places
which outranked Salt Lake City
in beauty. Chief among them he men
toned the valley of Granada, that home
of the Alhambra, where the nightingales
ever make the air melodious with their
sweet songs, and where the flowers seem
more fresh than elsewhere; and some
few places in Japan. His remark was
the verdict which most visitors pass upon
Salt Lake City, and well may her inhabi-
tants feel proud of her position. But how
different is our town TO those who dwell
here always. Her streets are made the
dumping ground for all sorts of refuse and
filth, and to complain to the city
officials of their condition is as
efectual as baying the moon. The whole
effort OF the City Council in regard to
such things is to do the will of their mas
ter who is not in heaven. Our City
Council well know that in almost every
lot in town there are cesspools into which
every kind OF refuse goes, and
that these cesspools are but breed
ers of disease. There is con-
tinued seepage from them into the
lower wards and lands, and in that seep-
age there are carried the germs of disease
and death; and yet no effort is made to
control the deposit of filth into these
pools. 1t might require an effort on the
part of the City Council to see to
such matters, and an active effort !
10 do anything is the last thing
of which that august body |
thinks. They only contemplate it when
they contemplate death and think of the
supreme effort Of casting off the coil. As
yet we have escaped those dire epidem-
les which devastate whole provinces at a
time, but they will come, and the terrors
of the plague in London will become a
reality in Salt Lake City. If the city
officials would but visit the centre of the
business blocks of the city, they would
lind that the refuse from all sorts of
places is put into the cesspools, while if
should be carried far out of town, and all
disease germs which it might contain be
destroyed with quick lime or some other
equally effective remedy. This is no SEN
sational picture of the condition of the city.
Tor everyone has had some experience of
1t In one way or another. If the people
of Plymouth town had been told the same
thing some months ago, they would not
have believed they were in so bad
a sanitary condition, and yet there
has ragged there recently one of
the most deadly of epidemics ever known
in America; so deadly that over ten per
cent. OF the inhabitants have been af-
fected with the disease, and about ten per
cent. of those affected have died. DIR I
Cyrus Edison and DIR. James b. Tavlor of
the New York board of health. and DIR
Martin, the chemist of the board, visited
the tever-stricken town of Plymouth, and
they came to the conclusion that the
mountain streams which flow into the ,
tow" had swept into the reservoirs refuse
from house near the head the stream.
in which lay a typhoid patient. DIR. ,
Edison is quite sure that this refuse was T
sufficient to impregnate with germs a t
much larger body of water than was :
swept INTO the reservoir by the flood" a
1t looks alarming for Salt Lake G
when we think of the refuse with which S
'ur town is impregnated, does it not? q
What DR.. Edison says about Plymouth
viii apply to Salt Lake: h
Sanitary laws were, and are vet. defed "
y y IOn location most favorable for drainage. n
me HH Town following the upward slope of +
III at whose base flows the Susuuehanna g
ucn thing was apparently never consid, ~
red, nor are there indications that II Will T.
e. A part of the Town Council, now desio- W
ated as the health committee. has made &c
emit toward cleaning few of the streets
ut ll the result was not percepdble to the N
Jew York visitors. DR.. Edison describes the w
ireetS as still reeliing with filth. and saws m
lat dlslntectants are still apparently mn IL
ho~n to the majority of the people there. tn
Is it not time that something was boi,o W
one to save us from the scourge which tn
as made such terrible havoc in tbe trc
town? We have the most tn
sautllui OF cities, but we have not the no