The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-02

person is safe. He may meet the dis ease of infection in any public vehicle, or any place of public assembly, or his friends may bring it to his house-It may even come to him by mail"
 THE TYPHOID EPIDEMIC IN NEW
 HAVEN
 A full and detailed report of that epidemic is given in this volume, and gives occasion for the following re- marks: If upon any watershed there has been a deposit of typhoid stools within a few weeks preceding heavy rainfall, it will be in simple obedience to the natural laws which govern the powers of running water that those stools will be carried into the streams which drain that watershed. IL those streams discharge into public Wal&r supply, the community using that WIZ ter will suffer an epidemic
 Tie above facts teach in the most emphatic and impressive way that pub lie water supplies derived wholly or in part from the rainfall and surface flow into streams is liable at any time to be- come a dangerous beverage uhlor- tunately this is the exact condition or the public water supplies in Cohhecu- cut with one or two exceptions.
 The risk of using water without ster- ilization can be estimated appfoNl- mately by observing the annual loss or life in Connecticut from typhoid fever. During the last forty years it has rang ed from 151 in d year to 54S. But forty years ago nothing was known of the specific origin of typhoid fever and drinking water was not thought or as the source of it. It is very interesting to observe the steady decrease of ty- phoid since greater attention has been given to the purity of drinking water
 Taking the four decades prior to 1901 and we find the annual loss by death from this disease has averaged in each decade as follows; From 1861 to lSIo tvphoid deaths numbered 4i5 per year; from 1871 to 1880 they numbered 952 from 1881 to 1890 they counted 270 and in the last decade, from 1891 to 1900, the average annual loss was only 2OO being less than one-half of the earliest de- cade. Typhoid fever is almost always waler-borne disease, and 1t folloWs that this decrease is due to improved purity of the water supplies. It seems to point also very distinctly to the con- clusion that if our drinking water could be pure, another human scourge would be driven from the catalogue of deadly plaeues The above are important facts and command serious thought Are 200 lives a year worth the trouble of securing clean water, or snail the money-makers of Connec- ticut he permitted to go on organizing irresponsible corporations for the in- troduction of water supplies to new without supervision or control? and shall citizens be allowed restriction to convert the nat ural water-courses of the State into open sewers to pollute and poison one of the mot essential necessities of iteE These are conditions which other states have considered and acted upon. How long will Connecticut lag behind in matters which so intimately concern the best interests of her citizens?
 The State Board is gratified to be able to declare, from both the morbility and mortality reports as received from month to month. and from the annual of health officers, that the gen eraI health of the State is under better control than ever before.
 The board desires also to say that the conditions resulting from the present system of sanitary administra tion point with emphasis to still other ways in which well directed effort will give trustworthy promise of a yet higher standard of public health.