Sewage Disposal on the Farm, and Protection of Drinking Water

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.
FARMERS' BULLETIN · No. 43.
AND
THE PROTECTION OF DRINKING WATER.
THEOBALD SMITH, M. D.,
Professor in Harvard University, Pathologist to the Massachusetts State Board of Health, etc.
WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 1896.


The conditions under which homes and their surroundings are kept healthful in the city and in the country differ in many respects, although the principles underlying them are essentially the same. In the city the sanitary condition of homes is maintained chiefly by a system of cooperation and centralization which brings into existence extensive sewerage systems, water supplies, and the collection of house waste by public authority. Regulations are prescribed and enforced under which the individual household must avoid all conditions which are likely to prove dangerous to the health of the immediate neighborhood and of the entire community. In the country districts, and more particularly in isolated homesteads, the conditions affecting the health of the household are largely in its own hands, and more individual effort is required to maintain healthful surroundings than in cities. The farmer must supply himself with his drinking water and must get rid of the waste of the household as best he can. On the other hand, the inhabitant of the country is in many ways better off than the dweller in large cities. Not only has he pure air to draw upon at all times, but he can supply himself often with purer food than is possible in large communities. Though he must procure for himself drinking water, he is, in most cases, able to get a purer water from the ground than the sewage-polluted fluid which is the only water accessible in many cities. While he must get rid of night soil himself rather than have it disposed of by a water-carriage system conveniently located within the house, he may avoid the annoying complications of plumbing, bringing with it the leakages of sewer gas, the plugging up of soil pipes by the roots of trees or by articles carelessly thrown into them. Moreover, he has it often within his power to acquire sufficient land around his house to take charge of all sewage and waste and to utilize it as a manure for enriching the soil. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that when the circumstances under which healthful surroundings are procurable are under the immediate control of each individual household they are apt to be perverted through ignorance and neglect. Conditions may then arise which are not only unfavorable to health, but which are likely to lead to severe sickness at any time when the opportunity presents itself.