Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/92

88 and abandons what little cooperation in medical and sanitary precautions up to this time he has given to the physician. Confusion reigns in the Serpa house, and many friends come from the surrounding ranches to nurse the sick and to sympathize with distressed husband and father.

The San Francisco cousin, Serpa's wife and the two sick children of Serpa die of typhoid fever. Friends. again come to console and remain to be consoled by food and drink. Among the guests are N. and N.'s wife from the N. dairy, P. and the family of P. from the P. dairy, an aunt and her daughter from San Gregorio (a seacoast town forty miles away) and a Portuguese family living on Los Trancos Creek on the road from the P. dairy to Palo Alto.

When the aunt, with her daughter, leaves the Serpa house, she takes with her two of the Serpa children. The first act ends with the general breaking up and dispersion of these solicitous friends to their respective homes.

The second act begins January, 1903. N. and the wife of N. lie sick at the N. dairy with typhoid fever. N. dies.

P. lives on the banks of Los Trancos Creek, a few hundred feet above the intake of the dairy water system; there are no buildings higher tip on the drainage area of the system. Nineteen Filipino wood choppers and a hundred lumbermen are employed in the hills surrounding the P. dairy; they visit the dairy ranch. On the banks of the creek, near the pig pen and just above the dairy water supply intake, are primitive out-house facilities for these laborers.

P.'s child is sick with fever. P. complains of a general malaise. At the aunt's house in San Gregorio, the aunt and her daughter and the two Serpa children are ill with typhoid fever. In the Portuguese houses on Los Trancos Creek, on the road from the P. dairy to Palo Alto, are five cases of typhoid fever. At Stanford University and Palo Alto there are two hundred and thirty-six cases of typhoid fever. The black pall of death hangs over the university and Palo Alto. Parents all over the country sit in darkened homes with bowed heads and mourn for the dearly beloved son or daughter, while the health officers work with sleepless activity. "By the process of elimination and by the sequence of events connecting the typhoid fever at the Serpa house with the P. illness, the outhouse on the bank of the P. creek, the rains and the impounded water at the dam, the conclusion is reached that the P. milk was infected through admixture with the creek water used at the milk house of the P. dairy."

Dr. Clelia D. Mosher's contribution to the 'report' contains an exhaustive study of the symptoms, relapses and complications of the reported cases. The analysis is based on the detailed reports of the physicians, supplemented by statements from the families and the individuals affected, together with a careful investigation of the death records. The total number of cases reaches 23G; this number includes 24 known eases for which no reports were obtained, occurring among students who had left Palo Alto after the outbreak of the epidemic.

The ages of the patients vary from two months to sixty years. Dr. Mosher shows that the most susceptible age, between fifteen and thirty years, is far above the average and explains the number of children infected by the fact that milk was the source of infection. Edith V. Matzke.