Copper Containers Not Sufficiently Germicidal to Typhoid Bacilli in Water.

Springfield, Ill., Oct. 5, 1904.

To the Editor:  —According to newspaper reports of the latter part of August Dr. Edward Martin, director of public health and charities, Philadelphia, stood sponsor for the following statement: "Typhoid fever germs may be removed from water without boiling or filtering. It is only necessary to let water stand for four hours in a copper kettle in a living-room temperature or twenty-four hours in a refrigerator. The water will receive sufficient colloidal impregnation from the vessel to kill typhoid fever and cholera germs."At about the same time the newspapers published an announcement that municipalities and communities suffering from or threatened with the presence of typhoid germs in drinking water were requested to call on the Secretary of Agriculture to render assistance; that the Department of Agriculture, after exhaustive investigations, had found a remedy for the destruction of typhoid bacilli in the simple retention of