Ice.

A water to which sewage has access should from that fact alone be excluded from all consideration as a possible water supply for drinking purposes.

The germ of disease may not be in this pitcherful or that; in this tumblerful or in that, but it will find us some day, if we continue to use the water which contains it.

Thirty thousand people die of typhoid fever annually in the United States. Calculate the loss of work, the unprofitable work of nursing, and the actual outlay necessitated by each visitation of the disease.

The protection of the citizen in his constitutional right to enjoy life requires that every advantage be taken of our knowledge of the natural history of the typhoid infection, that it may be destroyed before reaching our water courses. This infection passes from the patient to our surface waters directly by the sewers, or it drains through the soil with the sub-soil water, and reaches the surface in some lower level. Of course it may be lost in the mass of water in which it is diffused, but it was not so lost at Plymouth, nor at Laussen. (See page 50).

Dr. Robert Kedzie reports an epidemic of diarrhoea from drinking melted ice taken from streams containing rotten sawdust, in Michigan.

Dr. Chamberlain in the Report of the Connecticut State Board of Health, records a fatal case of typhoid fever due to the use of ice from a pond into which the dejecta of a person sick with that disease had been thrown. He also records an instance of typhomalarial fever in a family of seven persons, three of whom died, caused by using ice taken from a shallow stream where hogs had wallowed the previous Summer.

Similar instances might be cited ad libitum, but sufficient has been given to show the danger of using ice from suspicious sources; that the use of ice cut from streams, ponds or lakes, polluted by sewage or organic refuse of any kind is dangerous to health.

It is clearly the duty of the legislature to provide measures to protect the streams and lakes of the State against all possible sources of pollution, and some means for regulating the securing and use of ice for domestic purposes.

In Massachusetts no sewage, drainage, excrenient, or other refuse or polluting matter of such kind or amount as either by itself or in connection with other matter-will corrupt or impair the purity of a water used for domestic purposes, is permitted to be delivered into a water-course or any of its feeders within twenty miles above

Arsenic in Wall Paper.

the point where a water supply is taken. No horse can be driven upon a field of ice that is to be used for domestic purposes.

In New Jersey no ice can be cut within the limits of any city from any stream or pond, nor can ice be sold in any city, without a permit be first obtained from the local board of health.

ARSENIC IN WALL PAPER.

A few years ago, so thoroughly aroused became health boards in this country and Europe upon the outrageous use of arsenic in coloring wall paper that manufacturers ceased to use it, but recent investigation indicates that they have again returned to its use.

Dr. F. C. Robinson, a member of the Maine State Board of Health, and Professor of Chemistry, Bowdoin College, made a preliminary report recently to the State Board of Health of Maine. He gave the result of the examination of over one hundred samples of wall paper which he found in the stores of wall paper dealers in that State. While several contained traces of arsenic, he found three patterns that were highly dangerous. One paper which he found in use on rooms in two houses was the cause of serious sick

ness of two children occupying the room. This was a landscape paper and attractive to children-a paper imported from England. It represented a grape scene with green leaves and vines, purple clusters of grapes and workers dressed in gaudy clothing. There were found in this paper by careful analysis one hundred and sixty-eight grains of arsenious acid, or one hundred and twenty-five grains of pure arsenic in every square yard! Since two grains may be considered a fatal dose for an adult we have here a paper with enough arsenic to each square yard to kill over sixty men! The doctor found that the arsenic was not confined to the green parts, but was also present in the drab, blue and purple tints. This paper, when rubbed, as it always must be more or less when on the walls, is constantly parting with more or less of its arsenic. The chemist secured a small particle of dust from under the carpet in one of the rooms covered with this paper. Examinations readily revealed the presence of arsenic.

Arsenic in Wall Paper.

The question may be asked whether we cannot readily, or at least safely judge of the character of any sample of wall paper by its color. Dr. Wood in his report to the Massachusetts State Board of Health says: "There is absolutely nothing in the appearance of a paper by which we can form any opinion as to its arsenical or nonarsenical nature," and Dr. D. H. Galloway in a report recently to the American Pharmaceutical Association says: "I am convinced that it is impossible to say before examination whether a given sample contains arsenic or not."

Dr. Robinson says his own experience accords with the above statements in general, but he believes the darker colored papers are the greatest sinners in this respect." He says, whether accidental or not, he found no arsenic in light colored papers, and in those examined by Dr. Wood all that contained arsenic, except two, were dark colored. It might be well to state here some of the symptoms produced by arsenical poisoning in this manner. Robinson says of the children who slept in the room with the "landscape” paper on the walls that they lost flesh, grew pale, and had attacks of sick headache, had what they called bad dreams, restlessness at night. One had a "cold sore" on his upper lip which refused to heal while kept in the room, which healed rapidly when the room was repapered. The mother who used the room as a sewing room occasionally complained of a depressed feeling and sleeplessness, and the doctor says he has no doubt the children would have been fatally poisoned if they had remained in the room. He believes that papers containing a small fraction of a grain per square yard should be discarded because they may be injurious. The colors of wall papers are loose. Rub your hand over them and the colors will rub off. In brushing the walls the colors fly off in fine dust which settles everywhere, even under the carpet. Some one or more of its gaseous compounds is undoubtedly formed, if the room is damp, so that the underlying paste becomes mouldy, to be absorbed in the system, especially if the person be physically enfeebled. Cases of this kind have been repeatedly recorded, and doubtless many cases of mysterious sickness, with indications of slow poison, which have baffled medical skill, could be traced to this altogether unsuspected

cause.

Intramural Cemeteries.

Inasmuch as many foreign nations prohibit the use of arsenic beyond the merest trace in wall paper, the only safe way would be for the United States through its various State legislatures to take similar action. Either that should be done, or the people should teach manufacturers of wall paper that such paper will not be purchased. People who can afford it, and the cost perhaps would be little if any greater, should paint their walls, as thereby æsthetic as well as sanitary results may be obtained. Those who cannot afford paint would get clean and more healthful walls by the use, twice a year, of the old fashioned whitewash, with enough of milk or salt added to prevent its coming off.

Anything or nothing on the walls would in the long run be cheaper than paper poisoned with arsenic.

The presence of arsenic in paper may be detected by putting a small piece of the paper into strong ammonium water. If arsenic be present, a bluish color will be developed. As copper gives a similar color, as a further test, moisten a crystal of nitrate of silver with a drop of the water. If the color be due to arsenic, a yellowish deposit will be formed.

INTRAMURAL

CEMETERIES.

What to do with our dead, is becoming a serious question. It concerns the survivors only. It is important not only to the present, but to posterity. We know that when the heart ceases to beat, from that moment putrifaction begins. This process may extend for a hundred years, according to the conditions surrounding the body, as to soil, seasons, temperature and moisture. Every particle of matter surrounding the decomposing body becomes saturated with germs of disease and death.

The final disposition of the dead, therefore, is demanding the best and most earnest thought of sanitarians the world over. One point has been well settled. The dead should not be buried among the living. There is a turning back to the ancient rule of the "Twelve Tables," A. D., 200.

The Jews buried their dead without their cities.

Intramural Cemeteries.

The body of the son of the widow of Nain was met by Jesus when being carried out of the city.

Outside of Rome the Patricians gave large tracts of land for burial purposes.

The danger from intramural burial lies in the possible and highly probable contamination of the air and water.

The burial of a body dead from a zymotic disease is the planting of seed, for posterity, which is sure to bring forth a crop of pestilence and death.

The nearer the abiding places of the dead and the living the greater the probability of poison from disease germs.

Pasteur, who is known the world over, says: "We hear of microscopic germs, starting from the depths and coming up to the surface that is to say, in a direction contrary to the flow of the rain. The earth-worms transport the germs and bring up from where they lie buried, the terrible microbes. It is absolutely proved that these germs exist in the excrementitious cylinders deposited by the earth-worms. Disintegrated by rains, their dust spreads over the grass, and animals become infested from eating the grass. What outlooks are opened to the mind in regard to the possible influence of earth-worms in the etiology of disease, and the possible danger of the earth of cemeteries."

Dr. Charles Caldwell in a series of letters to students of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the oldest and best institutions in America, says: "Yellow fever is the offspring of putrifaction. It is a maxim to which there is no exception, that neither the yellow fever of America, nor the plague of the East has ever been epidemic in any place where the atmosphere was not loaded with putrid exhalations. In no instance is there a greater want of wisdom than in suffering these repositories of dead bodies to continue in the city; and in no instance is the wisdom of former ages more worthy of imitation than in having living and dead cities, the latter without the walls of the former for the interment of the dead."

Before the Ohio Medical Society, in 1888, Dr. L. Slusser, of Canton, gave the history of a well on his own premises, which became so polluted from a cemetery located near it, several years after it was dug, that it had to be abandoned because of so much sickness in his family by it.