The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

August. 1927 The Health Bulletin 25
PURIFICATION OF SPRINGS AND WELLS
P For nearly three-fourths of a cen- running down the ditch or trench to
tury the question of how water is a lower level.
purified underground, and thus re-
The experiments reported by the
mains fresh and safe and potable,
p^^lic Health Service concerning the
has been a matter of controversy m
purification of water are of intense
which the views of public health
interest. To quote the
authorities and
language of a
sanitarians throughout
the country
writer in the
have been
United
divided.
States Daily:
The United States Public Health
"These investigations have uncovered
Service has recently issued a report, a hitherto unknown law of nature,
known as Hygienic Laboratory Bulletin
No. 147, dealing with the question of the ground water, due to rain
namely, that it is the rise and fall
and
of the pollution of wells by means of drought, which permits the water to
the water under ground. Sometime become purified; were it not for this
follovving the close of the World War fact, the underground water would
a special board was named to study contain pollution of considerable age,
the subject and to experiment ex- possibly dating back many years, and
tensively in an endeavor to find out it would be difficult to find pure
how the underground water becomes spring water or pure well water expurified
naturally, and also how far cept under an impervious layer."
specific bacterial pollution, as well as Such findings of the investigators,
chemical pollution, might permeate and such conclusions as those reached
underground soil. A part of these by the editor of the National Daily,
experiments that relate to the dis- are based on common sense. People
tance at which chemical or bacterial complain of drought damages done
pollution might travel was carried on the crops; farmers fail in their
under the direction of Professor Stiles efforts; and all of us complain. But
near Southport, North Carolina, and such an occurrence in a land like
also at the old Marine Hospital at ours lowers the water level and there-
Wilmington, N. C. fore causes polluted soil to dry out
The reports of Professor Stiles' and the germs to die, and then in
experiment, which were published by subsequent years or seasons of rainy
the Public Health Service sometime weather when the water line rises, a
back, indicate that they were able to supply of pure water becomes availrecover
chemical pollution in wells
up to a distance of 450 feet, and bacterial
pollution up to a distance of
232 feet from the ditches or trenches
able for months and months afterward.
These scientific conclusions bring
to mind the thought expressed by a
in the ground in which the pollution poet long ago:
was placed. This means, of course, "The waves that moan along the
that the pollution permeated across shore,
laterally under the surface through .
^''^ winds that sigh in blowing,
the dirt proper, and not by simply Which men are wise in Mowing:'
ADVANCING INTEREST IN PEDIATRICS
We are publishing elsewhere in this
issue an article, accompanied by photographic
illustration, of the hospital
work carried on at Saluda, North
Carolina, for the benefit of sick babies
Along with the organization and
start of the Baby's Hospital work
there, chiefly under the leadership of
in North and South Carolina especially.
Dr. D. L. Smith, a pediatrician of
Spartanburg, South Carolin|i, and Dr.
Frank Howard Richardson^ a pediatrician
of Brooklyn, New Vork, and