The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1912-09-06
TYPHOID FEVER GERMS Turks
IN BOTTLES
As the Result of Carelessness of
Milk Dealer Twenty-Eight Peo-
pie Are Stricken.
Especial to The Citizen.)

(Speclal TO Inc CltiZen.)
HARRISBURG, Sept. 4.-Twenty-
eight residents of Chester county re-
siding in Cedar Hollow, Paoli, Duff
fryn Mawr and Malvern were stricken
with typhoid fever from drinking
milk served them in bottles filled
along the route.
That is the story of the local epi-
demic of typhoid fever along the
main line just outside OF Philadel-
phia that the State Department of
Health has been fighting, the history
of which furnishes a most striking
picture of the awful penalty of re-
ceiving milk bottles from infected
homes and filling them without hav-
ing them thoroughly disinfected.
An elderly widow living near Ce-
dar Hollow, became i'll with typhoid
fever early in July. She was the
first bottle customer along the route
of Paul Mace, a milk man living
near Williams Corner on the water
shed OF Pickering Creek. This
woman's domestic water supply was
dipped from spring, the overflow
of which was used by some Hungar-
ian and Italian families in Bidde-
sons row in Cedar Hollow. The
foreign families also bought loose
milk from Paul Mace, Cedar Hollow
being the second stop along the
route driven by him each day.
Mace admitted having filled many
bottles along his milk route. The
Departments representative found
him with but seven quart bottles in
the milk house when ready to serve
twenty quart customers along the
route the day the sale of milk was
prohibited. Mace's milk route ex-
tended through three townships and
three towns, total of some forty
citizens patronizing him. To-day 2S
of his customers are sorely afflicted
with typhoid fever and > others
have probably contracted it.
Paul Mace served what his custom
ers believed to be a good milk, and
yet, strange to say, a number of
them knew that he filled milk bot
ties along his route, and they con-
tinued purchasing milk from him,
knowing that the bottles, a little
while before, were standing on the
neighbor's door step collecting dirt
firm the roads, probably having been
polluted by dogs and cats, dirty
milk tickets or money, and that they
had been carried with dirty fingers
inside, Just before being filled and
handed to them for family use.
The physicians were slow in dag
nosing and reporting their cases. 1t
was not until number in a limited
area excited both the medical pro-
fession and the lay public that the
State officials were called to take
charge of the outbreak of the fever.
State Health Commissioner, DR..
Samuel G.. Dixon, Immediately de-
tailed County Medical Inspector OF
Chester county, DR.. Joseph Scatter
good, the Chief Medical Inspector OF
the Department from Harrisburg,
and representative of the Engineer
ing Division to render assistance and
to run down every possible source
of infection. Within few hours af-
ter the arrival of this corps, it was
! pretty definitely determined that all
the patients having typhoid fever and
those having suspicious symptoms
of the disease were receiving milk
from Paul Mace.
A careful inspection was made at
he Mace farm where the sanitary
! conditions were far from satisfactory,
but not enough evidence was secur-
| ed there to account for the epi-
demic. The dairyman's route book
was analyzed, complete list of all
| his customers was made, and a can
vass started reaching all of these
customers from the beginning to the
end of his route, with the result that
! it was definitely proven the first in
fections occurred at the premises of
the widow above referred to and the
Italian near by. From these centers
the typhoid germs were distributed
each day along the milk route until
22 persons were down with typhoid
fever and l5 others were rendered
more or less i'll.
Poor Mace is paying the penalty of
his own dangerous custom. He now
lies in the West Chester Hospital
sick with typhoid fever, his aunt who
lived with him is very i'll in the
same hospital with this disease, and
his hired man lies on a cot near by,
also suffering with typhoid fever.