The publicly supplied drink of Pittsburgh has been river water and
whatever that river water contained. Prior to the opening of the new
filtration plant last summer, that part of the city known as "old
Pittsburgh," comprising the first twenty-three[9] wards, received its
water supply from cribs in the bed of the Allegheny River at Brilliant
Station, about seven miles above the city. Water taken from these cribs
(and since 1905 from an artificial channel of sheet piling along the
shore) was pumped into reservoirs on Herron Hill and Highland Park, and
then turned unfiltered into the water mains for distribution to the
shops and residences throughout the city.
[9] Ward numbers in this article refer to the existing or old
notations. A new ward system has just been adopted.
[Illustration]
With the exception of two or three wards, which receive a company
supply of filtered water, that part of the city known as the South
Side, comprising wards twenty-four to thirty-six, and ward forty-three,
formerly the Borough of Sheraden, receives its water from the
Monongahela direct, and from the Ohio direct, just below the junction
of the Monongahela and the Allegheny. The former city of Allegheny,
the present North Side, was supplied directly from the Allegheny River
from two sources; first from the Allegheny at a point near Montrose,
about eleven miles up the river, and second from another point on the
Allegheny near Sixteenth street. This latter source of supply was
discontinued on March 5, 1908.
[Illustration: THE NEW FILTRATION BASINS.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers are turbid at all times,
and after a rain or in the spring, so muddy that a platinum wire
cannot be seen more than a quarter of an inch from the surface. In
addition to this, investigations have shown that the rivers commonly
carry in solution the soluble chemical products of the mills along
their shores,--organic and inorganic, acid and alkali; oils, fats,
and other carbon compounds; dead animals,--rats, cats and dogs;
flesh-disintegrated and putrescent; as well as the offscourings of
iron and steel mills, tanneries and slaughter houses, and similar
industries. But this is not all. Seventy-five up-river towns,--with
an estimated population of 350,000 inhabitants,--in the Allegheny or
tributary valleys; and in the Monongahela a long string of towns,
Swissvale, Homestead, Braddock, Rankin and McKeesport, all furnish
their supply of common sewage as a further contamination of the already
dirty water with its long list of disease-breeding bacteria.
These conditions have existed since Pittsburgh came into prominence as
an industrial center. Typhoid has been endemic. The duration of this
"plague" in Pittsburgh, unbelievable though its sufferance may appear
in view of the facts already given, is a matter of history and record.
For thirty-five years, up to the beginning of 1908, the city was in
the grip of a scourge which has been in the words of the most recent
treatise on typhoid[10], "one of the black records in the sanitary
history of our country." Here and there clamorous, indignant voices
were raised against it; but public sentiment had become so callous that
it only spasmodically and halfheartedly demanded the carrying into
operation of a tardy system of filtration. In the meantime, those who
could not afford to buy distilled or spring water, continued to drink
this filth.
[10] Whipple, Typhoid Fever, p. 158.
[Illustration]
With what result? For the last twenty-five years, an average death
rate of 102.3 per 100,000 population; since 1889 never below 107;
for the last nine years an average of 130; and last year, the year
of the completion of Pittsburgh's filtration plant, 131.5 deaths and
1,115 cases for every 100,000 inhabitants. A black record this, in
the face of uncontrovertible evidence from other cities, both in this
country and abroad, that the purification of the water supply should
blot out at least seven-ninths of the typhoid fever. In contrast with
Pittsburgh's high mortality, the average for other large American and
European cities since 1898 may be seen from the following list:
Pittsburgh 130.0
Allegheny 104.4
Washington 59.0
Philadelphia 54.7
Baltimore 35.3
San Francisco 30.5
St. Louis 30.3
Chicago 27.3
Boston 24.5
New York 18.2
Paris 17.4
London 11.7
Vienna 5.2
Berlin 4.2
The very even distribution of typhoid in Pittsburgh,--another
indication pointing to infected water as the chief cause,--is seen in
the map on page 927, on which each dot represents a case of typhoid
within the year,--July 1, 1907, to June 30, 1908, the period covered by
the main part of this study.
The second map shows the relative mortality, by wards, for the same
period.
The following chart shows the relative rise and fall from year to year
in cases and deaths during the past twenty-five years, and is based on
estimates of population provided by the United States Census Bureau.
The morbidity figures are taken from the United States census prior to
1901, and from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Health records following that
year.
[Illustration]
Previous to 1883 very little attempt was made to compel physicians
to report typhoid cases to the Pittsburgh Bureau of Health; hence no
reliable morbidity records are available up to that time. But in the
year 1882 an ordinance was passed requiring such reports to be made.
It is very certain that several years elapsed before a majority of the
cases was actually reported, and even at the present time, in spite of
prosecutions and a more enlightened sentiment, many cases never reach
the bureau. Yet the number of cases actually reported in Pittsburgh
proper, since 1883, reaches the astounding total of 54,857. In other
words, within the past twenty-five years, one person to every six of
the total population has had an attack of typhoid fever.
[Illustration: TYPHOID FEVER CASES AND DEATHS PER 100,000 POPULATION IN
PITTSBURGH FROM 1883 TO 1907]
But even more telling in its significance is the fact that out of
these 54,857 reported cases, 8,149, or 14.8 per cent died as a result
of their illness. Over eight thousand men, women and children were
sacrificed here in Pittsburgh in the last twenty-five years to a
disease known by modern science to depend for its very existence upon
lax methods of handling food, drink and waste. Over eight thousand
graves have been dug, half of them (4,069) since February 6, 1899,
more than nine years ago, when the report of Pittsburgh's Filtration
Commission, advising the necessity of a pure water supply, was placed
in the hands of the Pittsburgh councils. In life, these eight thousand
people, standing single file, four feet apart, would form a line six
and one-sixth miles long, extending from the court house in a straight
line to the Filtration Plant; or from the Point Bridge down the Ohio as
far as the Borough of Emsworth.
[Illustration]