The age-herald., 1898-12-16
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UNFILrERED WATER.
Caused Over 5000 Deaths in Thirty-Five
 Cities in 1S96.

From the International Medical Magazine.
 If some fierce barbaric horde, like the Goths and Vandals of old, were in the habit of sweeping down every year upon the civ- ilzed regions of North America, killing our people by tens of thousands and wounding from 50000 to 100000 more, all for lack of adequate defences, which would cost few beggarly millions of dollars, what howl of indignation there would bel How the press and platform, and even the pulpit would ring with denunciations of the criminally apathetic authorities who permitted such an unnecessary sacrifce! Yet would such needless loss in battle be any more de- plorable or any more criminal than per- uniting the same number of people by the many diseases which we now know to be preventable? A rough calculation, based upon statistics given in new book by John w. Hill, shows that typhoid alone in the year 1896 caused upward of 5000 deaths in thirty-five American and Canadian cities, saying nothing of the deaths from the same cause in the smaller towns and coun- try places. For every fatal case there were at least four that recovered, which would make 10000 condemned to a long and trying illness, with perssting ill health in many of them, and there must, in fact, have been considerably larger proportion of recover ies under our improved modern methods of treatment.
 But the striking-one might even say startling-fact demonstrated by MT. Hils book is that the death rate from typhoid fever instead of ranging from 32 to GA in eaeh-l00, 600 population, as it did in Phiia- delphia from 1890 to 1896, or from 31 to 160 in each 100000, if only our municipalities could be governed on business principles, with the help of the best sanitary science
 The proof is to be found in the effects of thorough system of sand filtration of pub lie water supplies in number of European cities. For instance, in Berlin the mortality from typhoid has, by such filtration, been so reduced that in each of the years 1885 and 1896 it was 5 while in 1894 1t was only 4 in every 100000 of the population. In Amsterdam the fate was 19 in 1S90 and came down to In 1896. In Hamburg the pro- portion was 2S in the 100000 in 1890, but an epidemic of cholera compelled the in- stitution of radical measures for the purifi- cation of the polluted Elbe water (which however, as the typhoid death rate shows, was not half as filthy as the Schuylkill river water furnished to Philadelphia) and, in consequence, the typhoid rate in 1896 had 9allen to 6 in the 100000.
 But lest the thrifty governing bodies of those American cities whose inhabitants are still obliged to drink diluted sewerage should use these figures in support of the adoption of some one of the various me- chanical filters which are being actively ex- p.vAteu II. lnIs country, il Is proper to add a few more statistics. In Atlanta, Ga the typhoid death rate was 15l in 1890, and in spite of the operation of a mechanical filter, had not been reduced lower than 30 Tn 1sg6 In Chattanooga, Tenn, the rate was 145 in 1890, and, with the help of a mechanical filter, came down to 60 in 1S99-to a rate just fifteen times higher than it should he under proper sanitation.