Polluted Water.
—Well water that is roily or that possesses objectionable taste or odor may be suspected of containing polluting matter and should be boiled before being used for drinking purposes until such time as may be required to have it examined. Sickness due to the use of polluted water does not necessarily develop as specific diseases, unless the water contains disease-producing bacteria. Typhoid fever, one of the commonest and most dreaded of diseases, is usually transmitted by water. Typhoid is a disease of human origin, the germ of which develops in the alimentary tract of the human kind alone. The germs may be spread by the waste from the typhoid patient by being thrown on the ground where it is taken up by the water and passes into streams or it may enter wells from privies or cesspools. A single case of typhoid has been known to so pollute the water of a stream, as to produce an epidemic of the disease throughout the entire length of the stream, among the people who drank its water; while water from a polluted well often transmits disease to a neighborhood.
Fig. 123.—Some of the common causes of pollution of wells, and the means of transmitting disease, such as typhoid, etc.