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

APPENDIX. 235
Dr. Thomas: '"I hope that this inoetiug will bo })articipated
ill by the audience ; that they will ask (luestions wlien
they don't understand and 1 am sure tluit Dr. Wilson ^^•\\\
be pleased to answer any questions that he can."
Dr. Lewis :
"I have been asked by our esteemed member,
and your valued citizen, Dr. Whitehead, to explain the
Plymouth epidemic, which Dr. Wilson referred to in his
excellent paper. Plymouth is a town of 10,000 inhabitants,
on the Susquehanna river. The main water supply was
from a beautiful mountain stream, the water-shed of which
was covered entirely w'ith woods, and on that water-shed
there were two small huts. In the month of Februar}' a
man who w'as a relative of the family occupying one of
these huts went there on a visit from Philadelphia. The
ground was frozen solid and there was snow on the ground
six feet deep at the time. Soon after he got there he had
typhoid fever. His bowel discharges, undisiufected, were
thrown out on the snow. He improved, but relapsed, and
the consequence w^as that his case continued for a long time.
(Jn account of the freeze the people had to use water from
the Susquehanna river and from wells in the town. The
water of the Susquehanna river was very ordinary water,
to say the least, and the wells in the town were, according
to chemical examination, simply villainous. On the 26th
day of March came the spring thaw. The snow melted ;
the usual water supply of the town was replenished, and
again used. Now this water, chemically pure, but contaminated
with the typhoid fever bacilli, was turned into
the town on the 26th day of March. On the 10th of April,
or fourteen days after (the incubative period of typhoid
fever), the first case of the disease broke out in a family
immediately below the dam, who probably drank of the
seepage ; and
within three months there were over one
thousand cases of typhoid fever; and before the end of the