In some cases these unwholesome and unwelcome discoveries, though a surprise and regret to the owners, were accepted as facts, and the needful remedies promptly applied. In other instances, such disagreeable revelations awakened resentment and were treated as absurd alarms or slanderous attacks, and ignorance and prejudice held their ground undisturbed.
In regard to one famous resort the State Board of Health of Massachusetts said six years ago: “The unsanitary grounds invite a pestilence. They violate the plainest teachings of hygienic common sense. There is no adequate provision for the removal of refuse, and the wells and privies are everywhere in close proximity, and some of the latter are immense and offensive affairs, emptied only once a year, in the absence of the summer boarders. At a large boarding house the sink drain empties on the ground within three feet of the well, and at another, the well is within a foot of an open trough sink drain, so filled and obstructed that the water sets back, and a filthy puddle surrounds the well.” These were mostly driven wells, reaching water from eight to twenty feet below the surface. The theory was, that the foulest water would be fully filtered by the soil above and around a driven well. The peddlers of this patent, with their boastful advertisements, are in a measure responsible for this mischievous error, which I have met in many states. I found a large hotel beyond the Missouri River, where, instead of even a cess-pool, the kitchen drainage gathered in a surface pool close to the well. At a bakery in another resort the sink drain and cess-pool are but twelve feet from the well. Twenty-four privies and thirteen cess-pools are within a radius of 140 feet of a well used by many families. When the water from forty wells was analyzed, the chemical examination proved that sixteen of them were bad and unsafe. The official State report for 1879 contains many pages of similar details. In fifteen days after the State Board of Health called attention to the results of this investigation, the citizens held a town meeting, at which it was unanimously voted that the Board of Health of this town should adopt all proper methods to perfect and enforce stringent sanitary regulations, and promising them their most cordial support in all reasonable efforts they may make in the furtherance of this end. The Board of Health of another well-known resort, after a careful examination of the sanitary condition of Oak Bluffs and Martha’s Vineyard Camp-grounds, frankly said that “unless proper remedial measures were carried out, the abandonment of the place, as a residence for health, is but a question of time.” The State Board subsequently commended this local board for adopting wise sanitary regulations and carrying them out with such energy that the high reputation of the place as a health resort might be preserved.
The same report says: “It must not be taken for granted that this condition of things is confined to one place. Visits to various seaside resorts of a similar character on both north and south shores show little change for the better. Many individual cases are worse.”
The official inspection of many such summer resorts revealed sickening details connected with the large hotels and boarding houses. One hundred and fifty summer houses examined were, almost without exception, objectionable, on the score of danger to health, due in part to foul air, but more to contaminated well water. There is always a risk in the use of such water, and the only safe rule is to make privies and cess-pools absolutely tight, and frequently empty and disinfect them, so that they can not poison the water supply. Nearly every State health report abounds in instances of the outbreak of typhoid fever due to bad well water, and one affirms that the majority of wells in the rural districts of that state are tainted.
As is my custom, in order to adapt my lectures on “Village Improvements” to local needs, I made a cursory inspection of the streets and private grounds in the town of ⸺, which revealed a prolific source of peril to its citizens. Though I had heard nothing of the actual experience of the place, I spoke in strong terms of the danger of an early outbreak of typhoid fever and diphtheria, from the proximity of vaults and wells. After the lecture I was informed that such a dire visitation had already desolated many homes, but it was regarded as “a mysterious visitation of Providence,” and nothing was done to abate the obvious cause of the pestilence. I find it exceedingly difficult to convince men of any danger from their water supply. They are apt to resent a disparagement of their wells as they would of their children, and yet I seldom inspect a town where there is not found urgent need of the warning, “Look carefully to your wells.” Gross sanitary defects are often found even around the homes of isolated farmers, with every natural advantage for drainage and healthfulness. Hence I advise that securing “better sanitary conditions in our homes and surroundings” be made prominent among the various objects of the “Village Improvement Associations” organized in many states, and now numbering nearly three hundred.
The unsanitary condition of Memphis invited the terrible scourge of yellow fever in 1878. The occurrence of four thousand deaths in one season compelled attention to the cause and remedy. If Memphis was then the filthiest and sickliest city of the South, it now claims to be the healthiest. The case demanded and received “heroic treatment.” Over forty-two miles of sewers have been built, on the most approved plan, with one hundred and ninety automatic flushing tanks, each discharging one hundred and twelve gallons of water twice a day. While collecting facts for a lecture there on “The Needs of Memphis,” I inspected the city, and especially the “man-holes,” in company with the city engineer, who had supervised their construction, and found in none of them any offensive odor. These improvements were costly, but the recent rapid growth of this city in population and wealth proves that these liberal expenditures were wise investments. The “death-pool” of 1878 now justly aspires to be a health resort. An excellent sewer system, with automatic flushing tanks, is now in use in Denver, Colorado. I made a similar examination of the man-holes there last October, with similar results, and received the testimony of a prominent physician, to the marked diminution of zymotic diseases since the completion of the new sewers.
Cumulative evidence on the danger of using tainted water might be given to an indefinite extent, like the following: Thirty-one out of one hundred inmates of a convent in Munich, affected with typhoid fever; the outbreak of typhoid fever in Princeton, New Jersey, two years ago; the fearful epidemic at Waupun, Wisconsin, in April last, and the terrible pestilence now desolating Plymouth, Pa. are all attributed to infected water. In Plymouth nearly one hundred persons have already died, and over one thousand have been prostrated—in the opinion of the physicians, poisoned by water pollution. Such facts should everywhere prompt to sanitary precautions, and enforce the motto, “Eternal vigilance is the price of public health.”
In a popular summer resort of Massachusetts there occurred eighty cases of typhoid fever during 1881, out of a population of only 1,500. The citizens were alarmed, and prompt and thorough investigation discovered and removed the cause. The mischief had been done mainly by tainted water. The remedies suggested by the board of health—clearing of premises, securing of better drainage and plumbing, removing of all decomposing matter, abolishing all cess-pools and leaching vaults, draining marshes and pumping out and cleansing all wells and cisterns that afforded chemical evidence of being tainted—were energetically applied. The owners of these beautiful cottages and villas spared no effort or expense to restore this attractive resort to its former salubrity. If any community of its size was ever more earnest, prompt and united in such a work of restoration, I should be glad to learn its name. In the face of peculiar difficulties on this rocky peninsula, nearly five miles of sewers were constructed. Hundreds of chemical analyses of the drinking water were made. Of the wells and cisterns so examined, nearly sixty per cent. contained water unfit for drinking or cooking. As a result of this renovation, the local board of health is quoted in the Massachusetts report for 1883 as saying: “These vigorous correctionary measures completely checked the epidemic, and not a single case of the fever has since appeared here that could not be traced to some other locality for its origin.”
Another seaside city, much resorted to in summer, with a regular population of over 3,000, after suffering severely from zymotic diseases, especially typhoid fever, requested the State Board of Health to investigate the cause of this excessive mortality. Nine tenths of the population here are crowded in one village of small area, having many narrow streets, with small house lots, necessitating a dangerous proximity of cess-pools, privy vaults and wells. This danger is increased by the nature of the soil, mostly sand or gravel, that facilitates rapid percolation. The climate itself is pronounced more equable and salubrious than that of any other part of the State, and therefore specially attractive to the health-seeker. The mean winter temperature is seven degrees warmer than that of Cambridge. The insular position of the town, and the sensible proximity of the Gulf Stream lend their combined influence to modify the extremes of temperature, such as exist in the inland parts of the State. The summer temperature of the water upon its shores renders sea-bathing recreative, invigorating and pleasurable, even to the delicate invalid. With such rare natural advantages for salubrity, the high death rate is traced to preventable causes. The water of eleven wells showed, on chemical analysis, a great degree of pollution. The remedial plans, prepared at the suggestion of the State Board of Health, were submitted to the action of the town meeting held February, 1884, and were favorably received. But at a subsequent meeting, this favorable action was reconsidered, and since that time no action has been taken.
The last two reports of the State Board of Health of New Jersey contain valuable accounts of the sanitary investigations of the health resorts of that state. The following statements are abbreviated from these volumes. Within thirty miles of New York City is to be found half the population of the state of New Jersey. Of this number, according to the judgment of engineers, chemists, physicians, and boards of health, not one half are supplied with water fit to drink. As our risks from impure water are even more than those from ordinary impure air, it behooves all to guard against any contamination of potable water. If there is a neglect of sanitary care, and especially of a good water supply, it is too late to adopt the policy of concealment, or to point to a death rate of from twenty-six to thirty as a justification, when so large a city as London can point to a death rate of only twenty per thousand, and many an English town of 30,000 inhabitants, to a death rate of only sixteen or eighteen. The sea coast of New Jersey, more than that of any other state, abounds in popular summer resorts. The State Board of Health has carefully inspected these resorts, notified the proprietors of existing defects, and reported them to the public when they were not remedied. Their first visits were often occasions of protest, and even of denunciation on the part of proprietors, many of whom, on sober second thought, were convinced of the truth, and corrected the evils complained of. The latest inspection says that the sanitary condition of most of these places has been greatly improved. In 1883 it is said of ⸺, where are six hotels and over one hundred cottages, “This locality shows no improvement in its care of sanitary conditions. No skilled attention is given to drainage. The water supply is mostly from driven wells, which are generally surface wells. Privy vaults are of the crudest description. Slop water is disposed of in cess-pools, often in close proximity to wells. This sanitary lawlessness has not been without its deleterious results.” The last report speaks of the same place as improving, but there are still some sanitary defects.