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demonstrated that, at these times, living animalculae, considerable
larger than the Typhoid germ, may pass through the filters into the
filtered water.
In non-epidemic periods a considerable number of isolated
cases crop up in every community, the cause of which can only be
conjectured by the Medical Officer of Health, and in which it is very
exceptional to be able to trace the infection to a preceding case; but
when the infection is traced to a preceding case we are no nearer the
scientific truth of the real origin of the infection itself. How did the
preceding case contract it? There is undoubtedly a great difficulty
in arriving at the probable cause of these sporadic cases, and this is
largely due to a fact which I commented upon in my last Report,
i.e., that in the majority of cases one learns, on enquiry, that the
patient was ill or ailing for several weeks before the condition was
diagnosed, and in consequence it is impossible to determine the
actual period of infection with any degree of precision, and, therefore,
to hit upon its most probable cause. The origin of these isolated
cases is very generally a matter of pure conjecture; the tendency is
all too common to ascribe the cause to any marked insanitary
condition of drainage and water supply noticed when the house is
inspected. That such are concerned in the appearance of the disease
is, to my mind, unquestionable; but since almost every house in this
Parish, when house-to-house inspected, was found to present one or
more such insanitary conditions, and the sickness from Typhoid
Fever gives no indication of a material reduction as these conditions
are removed, it cannot be held that when in one of such houses a
case of Typhoid Fever occurs, that the condition is certainly due to the
insanitary conditions which may be found. We must not rest
content with those sham investigations which are satisfied with the
mere discovery of a preceding case, and which conclude, haphazardly,
that one of those insanitary defects which exist in so many houses
are necessarily the cause of the infection, though drain and sewer gases
certainly contain poisonous substances, either of the nature of gases
or vapours, which strongly predispose those subjected to them to
disease in many forms—among which one may safely include Typhoid
Fever and Diphtheria.