“To show you the stupidity and recklessness of people, even in this enlightened century, which is manifested concerning the contamination of water, I must mention one other case. There is in the county of Kalamazoo, in this state, a nice little village by the name of Richland. It is situated in a most beautiful farming country. The farmers of that region have grown rich on account of the fertility of the soil and other special advantages. A few years ago the village board desired to select a new site for a cemetery, and chose one within the village limits, and within 30 rods of a well owned by an old physician, Dr. Patchin. I always tell names in such cases, because they tell the truth, and any one can investigate them. The old doctor objected to the location of the cemetery so near his house and well, and as the result of his objection there was a lawsuit; and if you will pardon me, I will mention something of the condition of the land and some experiments that were made. There were some 18 inches of rich prairie land, then below this some two or three feet of hard-pan, below this there were 18 or 20 feet of gravel, such as we have all through the southern part of Michigan. In digging the graves the bodies would be put into this gravel. The gravel was so loose and so moist that in digging graves it was necessary to put in boxing to prevent the gravel from pouring in while the grave was being dug. Below the gravel, and about 30 feet below the surface, was an impervious bed of clay, with a slope from the cemetery towards the well. It became a question now as to whether there was a possibility of the contamination of this well from burying bodies in the proposed new cemetery. I was called, and after studying the geological formation, concluded that there was a possibility of such contamination. The well was pumped dry twice a day, and on an average fifteen barrels taken from it each pumping. To show how ridiculous some theories are that have been advanced upon that subject, I will state that I was met in court with this statement: that it would be impossible for any of the water or rain falling upon this cemetery, 30 rods distant, to reach the well, because, as was found in some old book, all the water that goes into a well is that which falls upon a surface which will be enclosed in a circle whose center was the mouth of the well, and whose radius was the depth of the well. This statement was made independent of any lay of the land or the geological formation, and without any consideration whatever of the surrounding country. Fortunately this can be met very easily. Thirty barrels of water were pumped from the well each day. We know the amount of rainfall in Michigan per year, and we can calculate very easily the number of barrels that would fall upon this surface enclosed in a circle whose center was the mouth of the well, and whose radius was the depth of the well; and as the result of such a calculation we find that the amount of rain falling upon this surface during the year would not supply the well more than two or three days. Returning home and detailing the trip to Dr. Langley, he suggested that a direct experiment might be made to see whether matter would pass from the proposed cemetery to the well or not. He tested the water of the well for lithium, a substance easily detected, found it was absent, then had a salt of lithium sown over the proposed cemetery, and then examined the water of the well each day thereafter; and on the eighteenth day after the lithium was sown over the cemetery it was found in the water of the well, showing that the water did unquestionably penetrate the soil, pass down to the impervious bed of clay which was the watershed upon which the water in the well collected, and thence into the well. Notwithstanding proofs so positive as this, a learned judge in Michigan dismissed the case, and allowed the cemetery to be located there, with a possibility of poisoning a number of families. As a result, the families of the neighborhood had to discontinue the use of their well-water.”
Professor Vaughan holds that the popular belief that if water filters for any distance through the soil it is purified, is an erroneous belief, and cites a number of experiments made by himself, and numerous cases, in support of the assertion.
According to Dr. H. B. Baker, secretary of the Michigan State Board of Health (vide Report for 1874, p. 136), a terrible epidemic of cerebro-spinal meningitis, that wasted the village of Petersburg in the early part of 1874, was attributable to a spring five paces from a house and 15 paces from a cemetery, which is on ground from 12 to 15 feet higher than the level of the spring. About 18 paces from the spring was a recent grave.
Prof. R. C. Kedzie, of the Michigan State Agricultural College, to whom some of the water was sent for analysis, concluded his report as follows:—
“The presence in these waters of unusual quantities of chlorides, of ammonia, of albuminoid ammonia, of nitrates and nitrites, and finally of phosphates, shows these waters to be very unusual in their composition. We might account for the presence of all these substances if matters very rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, e.g., flesh, were undergoing decomposition in their vicinity, and the results of this decomposition passed directly into this water. The fact that the spring is near and lies below the level of the graveyard, that the well is in the midst of an old Indian graveyard, gives much plausibility to this explanation. The fact that the first person attacked with cerebro-spinal meningitis in Petersburg used the water of this well, and that others who used the spring water were attacked with the same disease, would very naturally attract very significant attention to the composition of these waters as having some possible connection with the epidemic.”
For several years many residents of Nyack, N.Y., have protested against the encroachment of the Oak Hill Cemetery property upon the thickly populated portions of the village, objections being principally made on sanitary grounds. Examination of the ponds and wells of the village has demonstrated that they are being constantly polluted by the emanations from the cemetery.
Not long ago the Detroit Evening News declared that the wells in the neighborhood of Woodmere Cemetery do not catch the rainwater until after it has been filtered through the thousands of graves in the cemetery, filled with decaying bodies, and that no water is obtained in the vicinity which is not discolored and has a brackish taste. After a heavy rain the impurities are most pronounced. The residents of Woodmere have long ago given over the use of water as a beverage. I do not blame them. I would not like to drink fluid extract of dead man myself.
The New York Staats Zeitung, a reliable German publication, of May 27, 1886, relates that a lawsuit of North Bergen Township, N.J., against the Weehawken Cemetery Company, was tried the preceding day before Vice-Chancellor Van Fleet, at Newark, N.J. The township demands that for sanitary reasons the cemetery shall be closed at once and no further burials permitted in the same. Several physicians testified to the fact that diphtheria and other infectious diseases are endemic in the township, and that they are due mainly to the unhygienic state of the cemetery, which lies in the most populated part of the township. One physician gave it as his opinion that numerous cases of diphtheria that appeared among the little pupils of a school was caused by drinking water from a well in the proximity of the cemetery.
In an address on “Public Health, or Sanitary Science,” read before the medical society of the state of West Virginia, May 24, 1882, Dr. T. S. Camden says:—
“The Board of Health report for 1879 gives the investigation of an outbreak of diphtheria in Northern Vermont, which occurred in May, 1879. In a school of 22 persons, 16 were prostrated in two days, one-half of whom died. Upon investigation the cause of the outbreak was found to be from the public drinking water from a brook into which had been thrown the carcasses of dead animals. Another outbreak of the disease of great virulence was caused by persons using water that was poisoned by the dead carcass of an animal that had been buried 75 feet distant from a spring. The grass in this instance showed by its luxuriance the trace to the spring. After the germs were once developed in many of these cases by drinking the polluted water, the disease was communicated to other persons far removed from the cause of the primary outbreak. One convalescent patient communicated the disease to six persons. Numerous illustrations of the importance of sanitary regulations are given in these epidemics.”