Soil and Water Pollution : Presented to the American Public Health Association at New Orleans, Dec. 1880 — Text and Context

authorities agree that any well situated within a few feet of a cess-pool or sewer should be regarded with grave suspicion, for the intervening soil may become overdone with filth at any moment, and cease to act as an efficient filter of the polluted water, and allow organic matter to enter the well; or animal filth may be washed into the well at any time by a hard rain.”

A great many citizens of Indianapolis are drinking water exclusively from cisterns. It is difficult to estimate the number of cisterns within the city limits; but a great deal may be said in regard to the general unwholesomeness of the water they contain. Rain water contains a small proportion of chlorine, the amount varying with the condition of the atmosphere, and the purity of the shedding surface.

When pure rain falls upon a roof it carries down with it all the impurities accumulated there during dry weather; these soon putrify in the cistern, and infect the water.

The majority of the cisterns in the city are faulty in some particular—either proper care was not exercised in their construction, or the necessary repairs were not made in due time—and they are found to be seeping, or leaky. Sufficient attention is not given to keeping the cisterns well closed, and the result is that filth in large quantities is to be found on emptying them. During my examinations I have met with many cistern waters in the city so polluted by sewage infiltration, that an immediate interdict on their use appeared to be called for. Owing to the impurity of the soil, sewage matter finds its way into hundreds of cisterns, and contaminates the water. Many of our cisterns contain water rank with vegetable or animal impurity, and the contents of the greater portion of these are not above suspicion. Some of them are neither more or less than shallow wells, receiving more of their contents by percolation than by inflow above.

Last December 458 cisterns in Memphis, Tenn., were examined with the following result: Sound, 209; seeping, eighty-two; and undoubtedly leaking, 167. In the total number, there were 249 condemned as unfit for use. To what extent these leaky cisterns contributed to the epidemic of yellow fever we cannot tell. The probability of sewage contamination in each instance was strong.

In the year of 1879 there were seventy-eight deaths from typhoid and typho-malarial fevers in Indianapolis. It may be stated as a probable fact, that our siege of fevers in 1879 originated and was afterward propagated in polluted drinking water, and ill-ventilated apartments poisoned by sewer gases, or in close proximity to foul and overflowing water closets and cess-pools. Forty-three per cent. of the total deaths in the city in 1879 were deaths of children under five years of age. Among the general causes of the high death rate of infants, may be mentioned poverty and ignorance. These two conditions existing in the parents, are great enemies of the public health and are two important factors which go to make up this startling infantile mortality. But it must be conceded that typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, hooping cough and diarrhœal diseases have been endemic in our midst as the result of foul air and polluted water. Deaths from these causes occur more or less at all ages, but distinctively more among children. The influence of filth causes the infants and young children to die at twice, or thrice, or four times their fair standard rate of mortality; and this disproportion seems to mark the young lives as finer tests of soil and water pollution than are the acclimated adults. The board of health of Indianapolis report that hundreds of cellars in this city are full, or partly full of water, the entire year; and that the increase of zymotic diseases is due largely to wet and damp cellars, as well as to the long continued and general practice of covering up foul privy vaults, after they have become full, to save the expense of removing the contents.

Being thoroughly impressed with the facts above enumerated, I commenced to make investigations. I employed a competent chemist, Mr. Jno. Hurty, to make sanitary examinations of water, and assist me in the work.

In the collection of samples of water, special care was exercised in regard to cleanliness and to avoid introducing any errors into our examinations. Below I give a tabular statement of the analyses of waters taken from surface dug wells in the city. Excepting the permanganate of potash test, the quantities are in one litre (22-100ths of an imperial gallon).