Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-07-14
SANITARY LESSONS.

ueutct CtuSSICS, sanitary anu meulCal
journal of New York, in its June number
introduces the matter of water pollution in
a manner that brings it within the COM
prehension at glance. The doctrine is,
that any foul drainage into the soil near
to and above source of water supply will
seek that supply and contaminate it, and
hence diseases that have their source and
spring in impurities. The article is by
Engineer Jordan of the State Board of
Health of Maine. The illustrations show
a well, in one instance, with the water
closets of the dwelling emptying into a
cesspool that is above the well and from
fifty to one hundred feet distant. The
drainage is naturally in the direction of
the well, and as the latter termi-
mates in the shortest distance of compact
soil, the filtration is into in. Still an
other illustration shows the cesspool below
the soil. As the latter is much deeper
than the former there is natural drainage
from it downward, toward and finally into
the well, though at a point deeper than in
the first instance. Still another illustra-
ton shows tie house drainage pipes leak
ing into the soil and feeding the pois nous
fluids into the earth that convey them
into the well. 1t is unnecessary for any
one to read the able accompanying article;
the illustrations prove the evil of such
relation of wells and of drain pipes and
cesspools. 1t is within the knowledge of
every one that there are water supply
sources in great number throughout the
country, that are situated precisely as are
those we have briefly described. The great
lesson that the paper and the illustrations
teach is that the soil is no barrier to the
passage through it of the germ of disease;
that, in fact, as the essayist puts it: "Wells
in the same general land slope and make
up of soil are not safe against disease germs
that may be planted in the ground on the
higher slope, even if l 600 feet and farther
away"
DR.. Vaughan of Michigan relates that
in village in his own State the select
men had chosen certain site for grave
yard. The surface was covered with soil
to depth of IS inches, and below that
there existed hard pan 2 or feet thick,
and below that, gravel, while about 80
feet under the surface was an impervious
bed of clay. Now, 500 feet distant, and
on lower level than the graveyard, DR..
Patchen had well, extending down to
the same clay stratum, which he feared
might become contaminated if the grave
yard were located as proposed. He veri-
fed his fears by spreading a salt of lithium
upon the surface of the ground of the pro-
posed graveyard and at a point 500 feet
distant from his well. In IS days lithium
was found in the we'll
A more striking case is cited from
Switzerland, where Government officers
carried on an investigation to determine
the cause of an outbreak of typhoid fever
in villages that had always prior to that
been free from fevers and typhoid epldem-
les. Observation, says the essayist, proved
in village No. l that only those persons
using water from a certain spring were
sick. 1t was known that typhoid fever
had shortly before existed in village No.
,, located on the other side Of high ridge
of land. The level, or elevation of the
valley in which was the second village,
and its meadows and streams of water, into
which the objections of the typhoid pa
tients had been thrown, was considerably
higher than the spring which had spread
the epidemic in village No. l. The fol-
lowing experiments were tried to deter
mine whether there was any possible con-
nection. Several tons of salt and several
hundred weight Of flour were thrown upon
the meadow adjacent to village No =. The
salt was found in the suspected spring, but
no trace of the constituents of the flour,
which was held to prove conclusively that
the mile of intervening earth had no large
voids in it, but was fine, and good barrier
to the particles Of matter, but that in the
percolation of water it was no barrier to
the passage of the micro-organisms that
started with the water.