Clay is taken as dug from the pit, without being dried, and mixed with the usual proportion of lime, a portion of which is used as limestone, the remainder as freshly burnt lime. The burnt lime is first added in such proportion that the water in the clay exactly suffices to slake it, and the heat given out effects the necessary drying. The limestone is then added and the mixture ground in a mill to the usual degree of fineness, made into bricks, calcined, and the “clinker” reduced to a fine state of division as usual.
Typhoid Fever Carried by Well Water.
The following account of the transmittal of cases of typhoid fever by well water is sent us by Dr. Henry B. Baker, secretary of the Michigan State Board of Health. It is made to him by Dr. H. McColl, of Lapeer, Mich.
Dr. McColl reports: About September 1, 1887, Myron Gardner, railroad employe, came from the South sick with fever to his father’s house. He was supposed to be malarial. No care was exercised with stools in the way of disinfection, but they were thrown into privy vault in rear of house, and in close proximity to well. Wash water was thrown on the surface of the ground, which was very dry at the time. About September 7 or 8, a copious rain fell and soaked the sandy soil; and on September 14, Wm. Gardner and wife, father and mother of Myron, and E. D. Gardner, a brother (who was a student in my office), and who boarded at home, were attacked with fever. On this day I got home from Washington, and found four of them down with a severe type of typhoid fever; and in two weeks Myron’s wife and child were attacked; also a child across the street at Terry’s, who had used water from the Gardner well; about the same time three cases in the Clifford house, south of Gardner’s, who also used water from the Gardner well. None of the people from either of these houses were in the Gardner house. In the Walker house, still further south, one case has occurred, and I was at a loss to account for this case till a few days ago, when the young man said that at the mill where he was working they had used the Gardner water for a few days, owing to the disarrangement of the pump at the mill. Two others of the mill hands—Anderson and Lester—who used the same water were attacked about the same time. Lester is now convalescent. Anderson is dead, as also the child at Terry’s. When I took charge of the cases, I ordered the discontinuance of water from the Gardner well and the disinfection of the stools, and no new cases are now reported. People who assisted to take care of the Gardner and other families, and who use water from other sources, have not been attacked. Clearly, Myron Gardner brought the fever home, the well became infected after the first rain from slops and privy, and the other cases got their seed from the water.
Dr. Baker adds: The foregoing instructive account of the way typhoid fever was spread, in one instance, is produced in the hope that it may lead others to trace the spread of this important disease, and, what is of greater importance, act intelligently for the prevention and restriction of the disease, as Dr. McColl did in this instance.—Sanitary News.
An Unsafe Church.
About a month ago, Inspector of Buildings Griffin discovered that the wall on the southern side of the Warren Avenue Baptist Church, Boston, Mass., was bulging. He climbed to the roof, and was astonished to find that the scissors truss that supported the pitch of the roof was not bolted together, but was fastened only with railroad spikes.
The wall was out of plumb fully nine inches. A peremptory order was issued to vacate the church. Then a more careful examination was made, with startling results.