The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-12-23
WAR ON TYPHOID.
State Board of Health Proposes
Radical Change.
Wants City Sewers to Find Diff
ferent Outlets.
NEARLY 10000 CASES.
Records Show Prevalence OF
Disease to Be General.
Would Force Reconstruction of
All Public Sewers.

With the full endorsement of the
Kansas state board Of health. bill
will be introduced at the next session
Iof the legislature giving to the board
the right to supervise and order
changed whenever necessary the water
supply and sewer systems of every city
in the state of Kansas.
If such bill as proposed should be-
come law, the board of health would
attempt to compel cities to cease empty
ing sewers into streams. They will try
to compel a complete change in the
present municipal sewer systems; a
change which would involve the en-
tire reconstruction of sewers in prac-
tically every city in the state. The
board of health wants the sewers
emptied into septic tanks or into
Sewage farms where the refuse
might be chemically treated to destroy
the germs, and then possibly converted
into fertilizer.
These radical measures are deemed
necessary by the board of health to
stop the prevalence of typhoid fever
in Kansas.
Statistics show that during the past
ten years, there have been 9,720 cases
of typhoid and 3.451 deaths from that
disease in the state of Kansas.
Typhoid attacks people only in the
prime of hfe-between 18 and 40
years. Figured at the usual basis of
$4,000 as the value of a human life,
the value of the 3.451 lives sacrificed
to typhoid has been $34, 900.
These figures are advanced by the
state board of health to show that the
municipalities of the state should be
their sewer systems, and cease dump
ing sewage into the streams. OF course
the reconstruction of the sewer SyS-
TENS of the state would involve the ex-
1t is likely that the sewer system in the
city of Topeka alone has cost well up
toward a million dollars.
DR.. A. S. Crunlbine, secretary of the
state board of health, says: ''At it's re-
cent meeting, the board decided to urge
the passage of a law giving the board
the right to supervise and change the
water supply and sewer systems in ey-
time, the board has very limited auth
ority in this direction. Unfortunately,
most of the waterworks plants are
owned by private corporations, who re-
fuse to allow US to examine their plants,
or satisfy ourselves that they are pump
ing pure water. The proposed law give
US the right to investigate conditions
thoroughly whenever necessary.
1.-The pollution of the streams by sew
age should stop. In the older states. it
has already been stopped. There is no
question that streams are polluted by
sewage. Even our own state institu-
I1OnS sewer INTO the T1N6T- II Is TRUE
that sewage becomes somewhat purified
by the sunlight, sand, ETC., as it flows
along in a river, and it is also SO much
diluted that the streams do not actually
become themselves nothing but sewers.
1t takes about four days of exposure to
the sun to destroy the germs in sew
age. The streams in Kansas are most
ly so swift that this amount of time
does not elapse between the time sew
age is emptied into the river at one
town, and the time it reaches the next
town.
Typhoid fever is a preventable dis
ease, and yet We allow sanitary condf-
tions to prevail which our records show
have cost the state, in human lives, $34,-
500 600 in the past ten years. This makes
no account of the loss to the state on
account of the sickness of typhoid pa
tients who ultimately recovered, but
who lost time for from two to six
months.
s'If the state was threatened by SIM
liar loss from some other sources, the
governor would call out the Kansas
National guard, and the whole state
would be in an uproar. 1t is time that
the state set about the application of
measures which will stop
this terrible drain upon the best lives
of the state"