Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/218

206 water could hardly receive a more striking demonstration. Yet the possibility has been realized in the experience of Melun, a garrison town of about twelve thousand inhabitants, situated on the Seine, twenty-eight miles above Paris. Here, in 1889, there were one hundred and twenty-two cases of typhoid fever among the soldiers. The Chamberland filters (Pasteur system) were then introduced, and the cases of the following years numbered, respectively, fifteen, six, two, seven, and seven again for 1894. Suddenly, during the severe weather of February of this year, twenty-eight dragoons, one after the other, came down with the fever. The infantry battalion, living in the same barracks, had not a single case. The secret was soon out. The filters had been allowed to freeze and the soldiers were ordered to drink only the weak infusion of tea furnished them, in which, of course, the water was boiled. The dragoons had simply not obeyed, but had helped themselves to the Seine water from the hydrants.

At Lorient, as in other districts of the coast of Brittany, typhoid fever has long been endemic and still remains so among the civil population. In the garrison, until 1889, there was an average number of one hundred and seventy cases yearly. In 1890 filters were set up, with the result of a decrease in the cases to fifty-eight for that year, while the three following years numbered only two, one, and one, respectively. In 1894 water was brought into the barracks from a spring supposed to be pure. In a short time eleven cases of typhoid fever declared themselves. On examination it was discovered that the spring was contaminated, and the garrison ceased using it for a water supply. The disease has now all but disappeared again.

Similar facts in connection with typhoid fever have been verified in more than twenty widely separated garrison towns. Of the cases which still appear where filtered water is used, the cause has invariably been found, when investigation was possible, to be some accidental use of contaminated water. Thus at Nantes, in Brittany, endemic typhoid fever was reduced by the use of filters to isolated cases. In 1893 there were seventeen, and in 1894 there were thirty cases needing explanation. It was soon remarked that nearly all were among orderlies, who have the habit of taking their meals in certain restaurants of the town. In each of these places it was discovered that the water used was polluted by infiltrations from privies. In four other garrison, towns the same fact was reported.

A final instance, which is also one of the most remarkable, is that of Auxerre. Here one hundred and twenty-nine soldiers were down with typhoid fever in 1892. Filters were set up, and there was one single case in each of the two following years.

Only one objection has been urged against this triumph of the