History of Sanitation

88 HISTORY OF SANITATION country thirty years ago. Up to that time most of the cities were comparatively small, and no thought was given by the various municipalities to treating the combined sewage as a whole. The conditions were ripe, however, for some unusual event to crystallize public opinion and focus attention on the subject, and the event was fur- nished by the city of Memphis, Tennessee. Ever since 1740, Memphis had been known as a particularly unhealth- ful city, where the death rate was abnormally high, and epidemic after epidemic of cholera, yellow fever and other contagious diseases had scourged the inhabitants. So com- mon had those events become, that they were accepted as incident to living in the locality, and were looked upon as special visitations which could not be avoided. Such was the state of affairs when an epidemic of yellow fever broke out in 1879, which caused a death list of 5,150, and was followed the succeeding year by a further death roll of 485, due to the scourge. Had the disease been confined within the boundaries of the city, it is possible that little would have been thought of the matter outside of the state of Tennessee. However, refugees, fleeing in all directions, carried the dread disease with them, until a strict quaran- tine—a shotgun quarantine—confined the infection to a certain circumscribed area. In the meantime, interference with railroad traffic, armed forces guarding the borders of neighboring states, together with the fear of the dread disease spreading all over the country, brought Congress and the public to a realization of the necessity for doing something to stamp out the disease. The most practical good accomplished by the agitation was the organization of a National Board of Health, a committee from which made a thorough examination of the sanitary conditions of Mem- phis. What the committee found in the way of filth was almost beyond belief. The city, they found, was honey- combed with cesspools and privy-vaults. Many of the cess- pools and privy-vaults were under or in the cellars of houses, where they had been filled with accumulations and abandoned to fester and rot. Filth was everywhere—above