The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-14

Charleston, s. C., lovely romantic, peaceful Charleston according to the writer, has the highest death rate of any considerable American city. The article continues:
 By accident Charleston got an eff cient health officer not long ago. A de- served epidemic of smallpox had descend ed upon the unvaccinated negroes and scared the tranquil city. Dr. J. Mercer Green was called from private prac- tice to tackle the situation. For weeks he waded in the gore of lacerated arms, and his path through darkest Charleston could be followed by rising and falling waves of Afro-American ululations; but he checked the epidemic, and when three months later the city physician died he got the place. Now, had pr. Green been wise in his generation, he would have been content to keep his municipal pa tient reasonably free from smallpox and live a quiet life But he straightway manifested an exasperating interest in other ailments. He stirred up the matter of the water supply, regardless of the fact that all Charleston's -great-grand- father had drunk water from polluted csterns and died of typhoid gentle man should. He pitched into doctors nearly old enough to be his own great great-g grandfather because they failed to report diseases properly. He answered back. in the public prints, the unanswer- able Good Old-Wav argument. He opined, quite openly, that there was too much tuberculosis, too high an infant nor tality, too prevalent a habit of contagious disease, and he more than hnted that the city itself was at fault
 "In the matter of the cisterns, for in stance. Charleston now has a good city water supply, fairly free from contaniina- tion where it starts. and safely filtered before it reaches the city. But a great many of our best citizens prefer their own cisterns, on the grandfather prin- cple These are underground, for the most part, and are regularly supplied from the roof-drainage. Also they are in termittently supplied by leakage from ad- jacent privy-vaults, Charleston having a very parliamentary and fractional sewerage system. Therefore typhoid is not only logical but inevitable I have no such revolutionary contempt for private, rights as to deny the privilege of any gentle man to drink such form of sewage as best pleases him; but when it comes to poison, the affair is somewhat different Yet, as far as the Charleston board of school commissioners has felt constrained to go. up to date, is this: they have writ ten to the city physician asking that occasional inspection of the cisterns be made, and decorating the1r aDsuTd re- quest with ornamental platitudes
 With the sewage 1t is the same situa- tion. There is, indeed. a primitive sewer system in part of the city But any at tempt to extend it meets with a deter mined and time-rooted opposition. The Charlestonians are afraid of sewer-gas, but apparently have no fear of the filth which generates sewer-gas; said filth ac ting in Charleston's streets, sub ject only to the attention of the dis sipated-looking buzzards. which are one of the conservative and local features of the place. I have seen these winged scanvengers at work. It is not an ap- petizing sight. But with one exception they afford the only example of .unof- fcial effort toward the betterment of sanitary conditions, that I witnessed in Charleston"
 MT. Adams reviews the plague epidemic in San Francisco, which furnishes striking illustration of the futilty of tfe Keep 1t quiet' policy.
 To-day California" he says, lis pay ing for her sins of eight years ago in sunpressing honest reports of bubonic