TYPHOID FEVER AND SEWERAGE SYSTEMS

The connection between typhoid fever and water supply has been frequently pointed out by sanitarians and, we regret to say, illustrated all too frequently by deplorably concrete instances; that between the installation of a sewerage system and the same disease, although not unnoticed, has not received the same attention. It was observed, to be sure, that when the city of Berlin began to dispose of its house drainage by the water-carriage and sewage-farm system a fall occurred in the death rate from typhoid fever and that a like improvement occurred in Munich under similar circumstances, but in those days of animated controversies between the "Grundwassertheoretiker" and the "Trinkwasserfanatiker" the true explanation of such an occurrence was not easy to reach.

At present we are in a better position to understand the real significance of the beneficial effects which often follow the installation of sewerage systems. In the first place, we