1893-1894 - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

1"11'TII lUKXNIAL REPORT. 135
State at laim- have a rio-ht to feel safer with stu-h a station
as that contemphited at the mouth of the Cape Fear, simple
justice requires that we should call attention to one fact.
It is this: Dr. W. G. Curtis, who has been quarantine officer
at Southport for nearly twenty years, although supplied
only with the crudest and most inadequate appliances, has,
by his skill, alertness and attention to duty, prevented the
entrance of infectious diseases. It is to be hoped that his
merit will be rewarded bydiis retention in his present position
by the United States Government.
ANALYSES OF DRINKING WATER.
The Board of
Health desires to place on record its appreciation
of
the kindness of the North Carolina Agricultural
Experiment Station, Dr. H. B. Battle, Director, in making a
large number of chemical analyses of drinking waters and of
the United States Marine Hospital Service, Walter Wyman,
M. D., Supervising Surgeon General, and Passed Assistant
Surgeon Jos. J. Kinyoun, Superintendent of Laboratory, for
bacteriological examinations.
The only chemical analyses of special interest have
already been referred to in the
of Goldsboro.
The bacteriological
report on the water supply
examinations were of two samples
taken respectively from the lower well and the lower spring
at the Caraleigh Mills near the city of Raleigh, among the
operatives of which typhoid fever was prevailing. All
those attacked obtained their drinking water from the lower
well. The examination of this water, while not revealing
the bacillus of Eberth, the specific germ of typlioid
fever,
showed the presence in very large numbers of the
bacillus coli communis, thereby demonstrating its "strong
contamination with fecal matter." As the first case of fever