History of Sanitation

HISTORY OF SANITATION 107 “the existence of specific poison capable of producing cholera and typhoid fever is attested by evidence so abun- dant and strong as to be practically irresistible. These poisons are contained in the discharges from the bowels of persons suffering from these diseases.” So it was that close observation and rigid inquiry discovered the truths that discharges from bowels of persons suffering from intestinal diseases contain the specific poison of the disease; that these discharges, mixed with the sewage of cities, often found their way into water supplies, and thus caused an epidemic of the same disease, and that boiling of water before drinking' would, destroy the infection, thus rendering’ it harmless. These truths stand to-day and the same means of prevention are resorted to in time of danger that were recommended during the epidemic of cholera in Lon- don in 1866. We know now, however, thanks to the inves- tigations of Louis M. Pasteur, that all that class of disease which he designated as zymotic, are caused by little micro- scopic vegetation which gain lodgment in the body where they grow, multiply and. thrive at the expense of the host, and knowing' the specific cause of a. disease makes it mors easy to fight to prevent and to cure.