History of Sanitation

112 HISTORY OF SANITATION owing to local difficulties, water from the Hamburg mains could not easily be obtained for the dwellings in question, and hence a supply had been laid in from one of the Altona mains in an adjacent street. This was the only part of Hamburg which received Altona water, and I am informed that it was the only spot in Hamburg in which was aggre- gated a population of the class in question, which escaped the cholera. At the date of my visit to Hamburg, a notice board was affixed at the entrance to this court. It stated that certain tenements were to let; but, above all, in large type, and as an inducement to intending tenants, was the announcement that the court was not only within the jurisdiction of Hamburg, with the privileges still attach- ing to the old Hanseatic cities, but that it had a supply of Altona water. During the epidemic the deaths in the several cities were: Population Deaths Deaths per 10,000 Inhabitants Hamburg Altona Wandsbeck 640,000 143,000 20,000 8,605 328 43 134.4 23.0 22.0 That infectious matter was communicated to the Elbe water from Hamburg is not in any way a hypothesis. Cholera germs had been as a fact found in the Elbe water. They were found a little below the place where the Ham- burg main sewer flows into the Elbe. They were also found in one of the two Altona basins into which the water flowed before filtration. ” No more striking example could be found, demonstrat- ing on a large scale the efficiency of filtration as a preven- tive of water-borne diseases than that of the cholera epi- demic of Hamburg in 1892, yet, at the present writing, there are people holding public offices throughout the United States who do not believe in the value of filtration as a public prophylactic, or who are so indifferent as not to