“As there is now no doubt that typhoid-fever, cholera, and dysentery may be caused by water rendered impure by the evacuations passed in those diseases, and as simple diarrhoea seems also to be largely caused by animal organic [matter in] suspension or solution, it is evident how necessary it is to be quick-sighted in regard to the possible impurity of water from incidental causes of this kind.  Therefore all tanks and cisterns should be inspected regularly, and any accidental source of impurity must be looked out for.  Wells should be covered; a good coping put round to prevent substances being washed down; the distances from cess-pools and dung-heaps should be carefully noted; no sewer should be allowed to pass near a well.  The same precautions should be taken with springs.  In the case of rivers, we must consider if contamination can result from the discharge of fecal matters, trade refuse, &c.”

Now, suppose all such precautions have been disregarded.  Suppose, as is most usual, that the well is dug near the kitchen-door,—­probably between kitchen and barn; the drain, if there is a drain from the kitchen, pouring out the dirty water of wash-day and all other days, which sinks through the ground, and acts as feeder to the waiting well.  Suppose the manure-pile in the barnyard also sends down its supply, and the privies contribute theirs.  The water may be unchanged in color or odor:  yet none the less you are drinking a foul and horrible poison; slow in action, it is true, but making you ready for diphtheria and typhoid-fever, and consumption, and other nameless ills.  It is so easy to doubt or set aside all this, that I give one case as illustration and warning of all the evils enumerated above.

The State Board of Health for Massachusetts has long busied itself with researches on all these points, and the case mentioned is in one of their reports.  The house described is one in Hadley, built by a clergyman.  “It was provided with an open well and sink-drain, with its deposit-box in close proximity thereto, affording facility to discharge its gases in the well as the most convenient place.  The cellar was used, as country cellars commonly are, for the storage of provisions of every kind, and the windows were never opened.  The only escape for the soil-moisture and ground-air, except that which was absorbed by the drinking-water, was through the crevices of the floors into the rooms above.  After a few months’ residence in the house, the clergyman’s wife died of fever.  He soon married again; and the second wife also died of fever, within a year from the time of marriage.  His children were sick.  He occupied the house about two years.  The wife of his successor was soon taken ill, and barely escaped with her life.  A physician then took the house.  He married, and his wife soon after died of fever.  Another physician took the house, and within a few months came near dying of erysipelas.  He deserved it.  The house, meanwhile, received no treatment; the doctors, according to their usual wont, even in their own families, were satisfied to deal with the consequences, and leave the causes to do their worst.