Fig. 37.—Contamination of a creamery from the water-supply.
Another report in this volume of the New York State Department of Health illustrates very well how a spring or well may be contaminated, and is taken from a report on an outbreak at Kerhonkson, Ulster County. The report reads as follows: "The village of Kerhonkson is built mainly on the side of a mountain of solid rock covered by a thin top soil of variable depth. Owing to its rocky nature, only one or two wells exist throughout the whole place; such a thing as a drilled well has never been seriously considered.
"The inhabitants obtain their drinking water from a well on the property adjacent to and above the present school building, and known as the "Brown" well, and from a clear spring at the bottom of the hill in the rear of the village store and known all over the region as the Loundsbury spring.
"The school building is an old-fashioned two-story ramshackle affair with overhanging eaves, especially designed to obstruct light and darken the upper schoolroom. The building is in the center of a pine grove 250 × 150 feet in size, which also obstructs the light and tends to dampen the building. At the extreme ends of this school lot are two privies for the boys and girls, built on loose stone foundations, innocent of mortar or cement, which allows the water in heavy storms to wash out the fecal contents of from nearly a hundred pupils down upon the habitations below. Were the wells existing in the village as carelessly constructed as the Brown well and the various privy vaults which I have inspected, the loss of life from typhoid fever would be terrible indeed.
"Obtaining the names of all the patients who had suffered from this disease, I found that all but three were Kerhonkson public school pupils, and all had drunk the water of the before-mentioned well on the Brown property. Two out of these three cases were mothers of pupils who had been stricken with the fever and who had nursed the children through their long and exhausting illnesses and afterward had been attacked by the disease themselves, while the third and remaining case was a puzzler. This boy had never been a pupil of the school in question, nor had he partaken of any of the water of the suspected well. He was a pupil of another school entirely and lived in an adjoining village a considerable distance away. A special visit to him, however, developed the fact that some time before his illness he had come to the village store in Kerhonkson to purchase goods and had drunk water from the Loundsbury spring.
"Two years ago two cases died of typhoid fever on the property on which the Brown well is situated. Their stools were treated with lime and buried on the hill behind the house. Three cases of the same fever have occurred in the same house this season. The well in question is laid up with stone and cement and was supposed to be tight and impervious to surface water contamination. Investigation, however, proved that there were openings in the stone work in the side toward the privy. On examining the privy it was found that the foundation was composed of loose stones without cement or mortar that would readily allow the fecal contents to be washed down toward the well, the privy being about three feet higher than the well, the natural descent of the land being about one foot in twenty-five, the distance between privy and well being only about eighty feet. Another factor favoring the well contamination from this privy is that any filth washed downward from the privy toward the well would be stopped by the wall of the house proper and carried directly toward the well which lies close to the southeast corner of the house. Thus all of the conditions point to privy contamination of this well which should be at once cemented up on the inside, thoroughly cleansed and purified, before its use should be permitted, while all the privies in question should be provided with vaults of brick eight inches thick with eight-inch brick floors all laid with cement, and their inside surfaces lined with cement at least one inch thick, to prevent any further possible contamination."
In view of the imminent danger always possible wherever human wastes are directly discharged into streams, whether from privies or sewers, it is obvious that water so contaminated should never on any account be used as drinking water. It does not follow, because a stream so contaminated has been used for months or years without producing any evidence of disease, that the water is safe. Unless an excessive amount of organic matter is so transmitted, no evidence will be found that such pollution has existed through any outbreak of disease. But if once the discharges become affected through a person having typhoid fever, then the result of the infection is apparent immediately. If, therefore, an inspection of the stream above the point where it is proposed to take the water-supply shows the existence of privies, as shown by Fig. 36, the water should not be used for domestic supply, although a number of individuals may have been using the water for years without bad effects. It is a case in which prevention is much wiser than cure, and while economy and convenience may indicate such a polluted stream to be a desirable source of supply, a proper regard for health conditions will rule it out absolutely.