The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-10-10

i cities do. This is the result of the ina bility to get enough property from the old families which have inherited the lands for scores and, scores of years.
 What interested me most in Europe was compulsory education. I think that i the best thing that could be done Nln America would be to compel a child to at tend school for at least six years, say from the age of years to 2 years Com pulsory education would be one of the , greatest things we could have in this 1 country"
  understood will control and effoctually stamp out any epidemic of yellow fever.
 For Prevention.
 While these facts are comforting as surances and mark distinct advance, it l is prevention rather than cure which should occupy the attention of ,those, in authority otherwise our cities, towns and villages, situated within the life-zone of this deadly peril are forever doomed by fear of this introductory spark ana through the instinct of self-preservation to maintain costly and barbarous shot gun patrol with the ever present possi- ] bility of accidental infection with all of its attendant hardships and misfortunes i to stricken communities
 Students of this subject can hardly fail to become impressed with certain 1 facts in connection with the recurrence of yellow fever in the United States since It's first entry first, that while yellow 1 fever formerly ragged in many of our northern seaport towns, it has made no visitation north of the Mason and Dixon line for so many years that apprehension as to such epidemic in those sections of the country no longer exists Second, ! that while formerly an epidemc in the south continued it's spread into nearly ! every city until its course was checked bv frost, since 1878 fewer cities were invaded and that certain cities, often far removed from each other, seemed to suffer under a peculiar fatality in respect to it's at 1 tack
 1 Science must discover some reason for ] these facts. An explanation given by , Dr. J. H. White of the marine hospital service as to the disappearance of vel low fever from northern cities is certainly entitled to respectful consideration. and IS as follows:
 "It would be a false claim, if set m by any of our great northern cities, that they intellgently provided themselves with municipal utilities which appealed strongly to their ideas of creature com Tort and general cleanliness and which incidentally and entirely accidentally elirn- mated the mosquito at the same time. l These public utilities were a thoroughly controlled water supply, sewerage. drain- age and pavements and these four, not one, but all of them, were essential to the end attained
 Whites Contention.
 "Dr. Whites contention is that aI- though accomplished accidentally. the agencies directly responsible for the elim- l inatlon of yellow fever were the iptro- auction of these public utilities which pre- vented the propagation of the mosauIto. Lot us consider the evidence in support or me fact that these same agencies may be relied upon to prevent the recur- renee of yellow fever within the setIon now know to be the habitat of the in- sect responsible for the spread of this disease. Parentheticaly, it may be re- l marked that seldom does the construc- tlon or water works, sewers and stree. pavement occur simultaneously but gen erally in the following order First. wate. works are built; secondly sewers are de- manded to remove the. waste water of tho water supply and lastly, after water and sewer pipes are laid the streets are | h. cident of this latter construction.
 After the epidemic in Memphis durinp the year 1878, when, according to Keating. | some lIGO cases of yellow fever oc- cured. resulting in 5150 deaths, and the return of this disease the year following. Col. George E. Waring C. E., was re- tained to design and construct a system of sanitary sewers, the first comprehensive application of the separate system upon this continent Concerning the potential ity of these sewers in the prevention of another disaster from like cause, Colonel Waring made the following remarkabl prophecy in his address before the Ameri- can Public Health association at Nash. ville Tenn, November, 1879:
 I trust that as l am neither a south ernor nor physician. I may be ex- cused for attaching more importance than many of you probably do to the proper drainage and cleaning of a city, and to l the quarantine My knowledge of the l history, of the yellow fever epidemics in l this valley Is infinitely less than yours l but l feel warranted and I take my war rant from the history of the plaques whict. devastated the filthy medieval cities of Europe, and from my own knowledge ! of the want of cleanliness and want of drainage in the city of Memphis. in ven- | turing the suggestion that even that feyer-smitten town may be made an i'm,
 possible field for the invasion of yellow fever in epidemic form.
 While Colonel Waring's theories proo- | ably had few converts, the necessity of doing something toward securing. relief from this scourge drove the people of | Memphis to commence it's sewer system which now comprises 210 miles of sani- tary and four miles of storm sewers. 1 Since the first work was nauglrated. | Memphis, although frequently meanac ced. escaped any attack of yellow fever until l the year 1897, when the plague being general throughout the Mississippi val l ley. fifty cases and fifteen deaths were ! accredited to Memphis. From a popuia- 1 ton of 33,592. according to the census l of 1880 that city had grown to 102 320 sin- ] habtants in 1900.
 From a recent letter from the city en- ] gineer of Memphis regarding the situation l there in 1897 the following is quoted: Re- l garding fever conditions here in 1S97 beg | to say have investigated the matter and 1 find that we had fifty cases and fifteen 1 deaths All of these cases were distinctly 1 traceable to one locality. The infected ] district was unsewered It was inhabited | principally by people of the lower class I It was partly paved and had water con 1 nections.'
 Prior to 13a0