Fifty years ago, cities and towns used to be very careless about where they got their water supply, and would often take it out of streams into which other cities emptied their sewage. Now, however, they are much more particular; and the health officers, or Boards of Health, are insisting that public water supply, such as is brought into our houses in pipes, shall be taken either from some spring or deep-flowing well, or from a stream or lake up in the hills, into which no drainage from houses or farmyards, and no dirty water from factories, empties.
A PIPE FOR THE CITY WATER SUPPLY
This pipe is laid for many miles to bring water from the distant hills.
We are still, however, far from being as careful as we should be about this; and I am sorry to say that America has had more deaths from typhoid fever than any other civilized country. Germany, which, of all countries in the world, is the most particular about keeping its water supply pure, has the fewest deaths from this cause, in proportion to its population—scarcely one fifth as many as we have.
Therefore, by taking proper care, it would be quite possible to prevent at least two thirds of our nearly 400,000 cases of typhoid fever and 35,000 deaths from typhoid, every year.
It is not only cities and towns that ought to be careful of their water supply. In fact, now, out on the farms and in the healthy country districts, the death rate from typhoid fever has actually become higher than it is in our large cities. The main cause of this is the custom of digging the well in such a place that the waste water thrown out from the house, or the drainage from the barnyard or the pigpen or the chicken-house may wash into it, soaking down through the porous soil. Far more typhoid fever now is spread by means of infected well water than by any other means.
Most dangerous of all is the leakage from the privy vault; as, by this means, the germs of typhoid fever and other diseases that affect the food tube and digestion may drain through the soil till they reach the drinking water in the well. These dangers can be avoided either by having the well dug at some distance from the house and in higher ground, or by having the drainage from the house, barns, and out-buildings piped and carried to a safe distance from the well.
Fortunately, there are only a few kinds of germs that make us sick. Most germs are helping us all the time; we could not live without them. Some of them make our butter taste good, and others make our crops grow, and others eat up the dirt that would make us sick. But since disease germs are so tiny that we cannot possibly see them with the naked eye, we must know where the water and milk that we use come from, and whether or not they are perfectly clean. Boiling the water will kill these germs and make the water pure. It is better not to boil milk if it can be had from a dairy where the stable and the cows and the milkmen and the pails and bottles are quite clean.
The fruits and fruit juices—lemon and orange and raspberry and lime and grape—give nice wholesome drinks. Home-made juices are much better than those you buy; you can be sure that they are pure and really made from fruit. And just here I want to caution you against buying “pink lemonade” or soda water or any other drink of that sort from the penny venders and open stalls on the street. The drinks they sell are not made from pure fruit juices, but from different flavoring extracts that are made to taste like the fruit and are colored with cheap dyes. Even the sweetening in them is not pure sugar, and they are often made or handled in a careless, dirty manner, or exposed to the dust of the street, and to flies.