Any spittoon, slop pail, sink drain, urinal, privy, cesspool, sewage
tank, or sewage distribution field is a potential danger. A bit of spit,
urine, or feces the size of a pin head may contain many hundred germs,
all invisible to the naked eye and each one capable of producing disease.
These discharges should be kept away from the food and drink of man
and animals. From specific germs that may be carried in sewage at any
time there may result typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cholera, dysentery,
diarrhea, and other dangerous ailments, and it is probable that other
maladies may be traced to human waste. From certain animal parasites or
their eggs that may be carried in sewage there may result intestinal
worms, of which the more common are the hookworm, roundworm, whipworm,
eelworm, tapeworm, and seat worm.
Sewage, drainage, or other impure water may contain also the causative
agents of numerous ailments common to live stock, such as tuberculosis,
foot-and-mouth disease, hog cholera, anthrax, glanders, and stomach and
intestinal worms.
Disease germs are carried by many agencies and unsuspectingly received by
devious routes into the human body. Infection may come from the swirling
dust of the railway roadbed, from contact with transitory or chronic
carriers of disease, from green truck grown in gardens fertilized with
night soil or sewage, from food prepared or touched by unclean hands
or visited by flies or vermin, from milk handled by sick or careless
dairymen, from milk cans and utensils washed with contaminated water, or
from cisterns, wells, springs, reservoirs, irrigation ditches, brooks,
or lakes receiving the surface wash or the underground drainage from
sewage-polluted soil.
Many recorded examples show with certainty how typhoid fever and other
diseases have been transmitted. A few indicating the responsibilities and
duties of people who live in the country are cited here.
In August, 1889, a sister and two brothers aged 18, 21, and 23 years,
respectively, and all apparently in robust health dwelt together in a
rural village in Columbiana County, Ohio. Typhoid fever in particularly
virulent form developed after use of drinking water from a badly polluted
surface source. The deaths of all three occurred within a space of 10
days.
In September and October, 1899, 63 cases of typhoid fever, resulting
in 5 deaths, occurred at the Northampton (Mass.) insane hospital. This
epidemic was conclusively traced to celery, which was eaten freely in
August and was grown and banked in a plot that had been fertilized in the
late winter or early spring with the solid residue and scrapings from a
sewage filter bed situated on the hospital grounds.
Some years ago Dr. W. W. Skinner, Bureau of Chemistry, Department of
Agriculture, investigated the cause of an outbreak of typhoid fever in
southwest Virginia. A small stream meandered through a narrow valley
in which five 10-inch wells about 450 feet deep had been drilled in
limestone formation. The wells were from 50 to 400 feet from the stream,
from which, it was suspected, pollution was reaching the wells. In a pool
in the stream bed approximately one-fourth mile above the wells several
hundred pounds of common salt were dissolved. Four of the wells were cut
off from the pump and the fifth was subjected to heavy pumping. The water
discharged by the pump was examined at 15-minute intervals and its salt
content determined over a considerable period of time. After the lapse of
several 15-minute intervals the salt began to rise and continued to rise
until the maximum was approximately seven times that at the beginning of
the test, thus proving the facility with which pollution may pass a long
distance underground and reach deep wells.
Probably no epidemic in American history better illustrates the dire
results that may follow one thoughtless act than the outbreak of typhoid
fever at Plymouth, Pa., in 1885. In January and February of that year the
night discharges of one typhoid fever patient were thrown out upon the
snow near his home. These, carried by spring thaws into the public water
supply, caused an epidemic running from April to September. In a total
population of about 8,000, 1,104 persons were attacked by the disease and
114 died.
Like plants and animals, disease germs vary in their powers of resistance.
Some are hardy, others succumb easily. Outside the body most of them
probably die in a few days or weeks. It is never certain when such germs
may not lodge where the immediate surroundings are favorable to their life
and reproduction. Milk is one of the common substances in which germs
multiply rapidly. The experience at Northampton shows that typhoid-fever
germs may survive several months in garden soil. Laboratory tests by the
United States Public Health Service showed that typhoid-fever germs had
not all succumbed after being frozen in cream 74 days. (Public Health
Reports, Feb. 8, 1918, pp. 163-166.) Ravenel kept the spores of anthrax
immersed for 244 days in the strongest tanning fluids without perceptible
change in their vitality or virulence. (Annual Report, State Department of
Health, Mass., 1916, p. 494.)
=Unsafe practices.=--Upon thousands of small farms there are no privies
and excretions are deposited carelessly about the premises. A place of
this character is shown in figure 1. Upon thousands of other farms the
privy is so filthy and neglected that hired men and visitors seek near-by
sheds, fields, and woods. A privy of this character is shown in figure 2.
These practices and conditions exist in every section of the country. They
should be abolished.
Deserving of severe censure is the old custom of conveying excrements or
sewage into abandoned wells or some convenient stream. Such a practice is
indecent and unsafe. It is unnecessary and is contrary to the laws of most
of the States.
Likewise dangerous and even more disgusting is the old custom of using
human excrement or sewage for the fertilization of truck land. Under
no circumstances should such wastes be used on land devoted to celery,
lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, cabbages, tomatoes, melons, or other
vegetables, berries, or low-growing fruits that are eaten raw. Disease
germs or particles of soil containing such germs may adhere to the skins
of vegetables or fruits and infect the eater.
Upon farms it is necessary to dispose of excretal wastes at no great
distance from the dwelling. The ability and likelihood of flies carrying
disease germs direct to the dinner table, kitchen, or pantry are well
known. Vermin, household pets, poultry, and live stock may spread such
germs. For these reasons, and also on the score of odor, farm sewage never
should be exposed.
[Illustration: BPR-RE 1381