Killed by Uncleanliness.

Mrs. Mary Wagner-Fisher calls attention seasonably to a frequent fatal danger which comes by way of water supply poisoned by house-slops, or that tolerated but inexcusable backyard abomination which need not be named. The remark of a physician who gave special attention to sanitary arrangements is quoted to the effect that a well may drain a section of nearly half a mile around, and that consequently it is impossible to be over-cautious as to its location and care. Diphtheria and scarlet, typhus and typhoid or "filth" fevers, resulting from lack of cleanliness, take countless victims. Some of the cases sited in the Rural New Yorker, are "shocking" - one of a whole family swept away and the discovery made too late that "an opening had been formed between the drainage of the house and the well, which had not been cleaned out for many a year." Another was that of a husband and father:

"After his death it was found that the cesspool which received the drainage from the house was feeding the well with its filth and the water would probably have killed the whole family if the members had drank equally of it."

A notable instance rather out of the usual order should be kept in mind in these days of free application of commercial fertilizers, and of poisons against insects. It is that of a favorite son, "just turned twenty-four," who died last summer after brief sickness:

"A heavy rain had followed the application of manufactured fertilizer on a field which sloped toward a spring from which the family obtained water, and the water washed from the field overflowed the spring and the ground about it. The young man was a great water drinker, and daily drank large draughts from this spring. The poor father deplores his own ignorance and carelessness in the matter, and his experience may serve as a warning to others who use either fertilizers or Paris green on their crops to look well to the water supply for both themselves and their cattle and poultry."