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

216 APPENDIX.
will not have it ready before October, as I want to
include in my observations
the month of September, as August and September are the
unhealthiest months on Roanoke river; but I can give you a practical
illustration of the result of using water from driven pumps for August.
There has been an average of sixty-live hands (greatest number eighty)
working on the dyke on the Roanoke river on Northampton State Farm,
and I have had them to use exclusively water taken to them from the
quarters two miles distant (driven pum})), and during the entire month
there was not a ti'mgle case of intermittent fever among the force. This
I consider the most unhealthy situation on the entire farm, and, to use
an old Louisiana expression, the 'malaria is such that j'ou can stir it
with a stick or cut it with a knife.' During my twenty-three years'
experience in
the active practice of medicine, including a residence of
six years on Red river, in northei'n Louisiana, I have been a great
stickler for good drinking water, and I think the day is not far distant
when the malarial dilemma will be solved by working up a public sentiment
in favor of the use of good drinking water. I am fully aware that
one swallow does not make a summer, but I am greatly encouraged in
the line of work I am pursuing during my four months' residence as
physician to State farms. If you wish I will contribute the article I
have reference to to the Ballethi..
" Yours very truly,
"GEORGE H. WEST."
I am very much in liopes that the authorities of the Penitentiary may
carry out in detail, on one of its farms at least, the experiment suggested
in my letter to Superintendent Leazar. It would be extremely valuable
and carrj' great weight in the scientific world.
While this investigation is not yet concluded, 1 believe the reader will
agree with me that the case is practically made out, and that we may
claim with certainty that the malarial poison finds its way into the
human system through the medium of drinking water, and that in all
probability it constitutes its principal avenue of access. Q. E. D.
Excluding malarial diseases, there is, in my deliberate opinion, no
healthier country on earth than Eastern North Carolina. If the universal
employment of pure drinking water in that section could be
brought about, its health record would indeed be revolutionized, and
that really splendid country would blossom as the rose.
POSTSCRIPT.
Since the above was published that admirable journal, the Charleston
Neivs and Courier has interested itself actively in the investigation of this
question. Besides publishing most of the letters given above the editor