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Philosophical Society Typhoid and the Politics of Public Health
in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Memoir 179) Michael P.
McCarthy This is the story of how Phila. got safe drinking water
--or safe so far as the medical standards of the time were
concerned, the major culprit in the 19th century being typhoid.
Typhoid frightened the urbanizing world of the late 19th
century. A virulent micro-organism that attacks the intestinal
tract, in most cases it spreads when the excreta of an ill
person get into the water supply. Phila. was suuffering from a
typhoid epidemic when a terrible snowstorm hit in Feb. 1899. The
disease struck every ward in the city--wealthy & poor alike
suffered since infected river water made its way through the
entire system. Phila. public health officials, the major &
common council recognized that the city’s pumping stations
required new filtration systems, but the select council killed
the bill. Thanks to episodes like this in o