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

FIFTH BIENNIAJ. REPOitT. 67
water was obtained from ordinary wells as a rule, while
those using cistern water did not restrict themselves to that.
That the main street of the town was sprinkled with water
pumped into mains from Hendrix creek, and tliat the same
was used b}' some drug stores for washing soda-water glasses,
etc.
That a case of typhoid fever had occurred on the watershed
of said creek during the preceding winter. That in
nearly every instance typhoid fever had occurred on the
same lot witliin a few years previous and that the undisiufected
dejections had been thrown out upon the surface of
the ground or emptied into the ordinary privy—which is
the same thing. That about the time of the beginning of
the epidemic the water in the wells was rather low from
drought.
Samples of the water from Hendrix creek and from the
two wells most in evidence were sent to the State Experiment
Station for chemical analysis, and, Surgeon General
Wyman, of the Marine Hospital Service, having at my
request promised to have bacteriological tests made, to
AVashington also.
Unfortunately the threatenings of cholera
at the port of New York and the yellow fever at Brunswick
so occupied the department, taking the bacteriologist of the
service, Dr. Kinyoun, out of his laboratory, among other
things, that the latter examinations could not be made.
The water, however, was promptl}' analyzed chemically,
and while the water from the creek, which no one drank,
proved to be objectionable, that from the wells was better
and fairly good drinking water. So that no manifest
explanation of the prevalence of the fever could be obtained.
The theory- most plausible to my mind, after carefully considering
the facts, was that the town was suffering the consequences
of former .sanitary sins—that the undi.sinfected
discharges of former cases had poisoned the soil ;
that certain
subtle conditions favorable to the development of the germs