REPORT 
OF THE 
v/ 
BOARD OF HEALTH 
TO THE 
CITIZENS OF BRIDGEWATER, 
MARCH, 1881. 
BOSTON: 
FRANKLIN PRESS: RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY. 
1881. [At its annual meeting, the town voted that this report be printed, 
and a copy thereof be placed in each family in town by the 
Selectmen.] REPORT. 
No prevalent sickness has visited us the past year, except a 
mild form of measles, which closed for a time one of the 
schools. 
The rate of mortality has been less than twenty for each 
thousand of population. The previous year it was a fraction 
over fourteen per thousand. This increase of mortality has 
been mostly owing to still-births and the increased number of 
deaths of the aged. 
To one member of the Board was committed the matter of the 
sanitary condition of the school-buildings ; who reports some 
improvements greatly needed in grading, and that all the 
buildings are somewhat defective in the means of ventilation, 
effected in most of them only by open windows and doors; 
and that it is not easy to make ventilation satisfactory in those 
in present use, but that, when new ones take their places, due 
attention should be paid to this matter. 
The town, last March, appropriated a hundred dollars, to be 
expended for a sanitary visitation of each house in town by an 
agent to be appointed by, and subject to, the direction of the 
Town Board of Health. 
The Board appointed one of their own number to this work, 
who has, in some cases, been aided by the needed advice of 
another member of the Board, both together acting as a com- 
mittee of the Board. 
The Board has held several meetings to hear the reports of 4 
their agent, and to enforce, by notices, reforms in certain cases, 
and to counsel and advise him. 
Two hundred and forty-six houses have been visited by him, 
several of which were occupied by two families in each. 
The examination included a record of from twenty to twenty- 
five facts regarding each house, which, in cases of sickness or 
of sale, may be of .value for reference. 
Seventy-seven notices have called attention to reforms need- 
ed ; thirty of which were written, and copies preserved, and 
forty-seven were verbal, of which record was made. 
In forty-seven houses (about one in five visited), reforms have 
been effected ; and in twenty others reforms were promised, but 
delay for good cause has been allowed. 
In twenty-nine cases reforms were advised, but not enforced. 
Sixty-three revisitations have been made to see that needed 
reforms have been made, or to enforce their being made ; and in 
one instance only, has it been necessary to have served a legal 
notice. The cost of this to the town (including revisitations 
and record, writing and copying notices, carriage-hire, etc.), has 
been but fifty-two dollars, and has averaged about twenty-one 
cents per house. At the same rate, eighty-eight dollars would 
cover the cost of the visitation of the four hundred and four- 
teen remaining houses ; but, as many of these are more scattered 
and more distant from the centre, more time and horse-hire 
would be needed. Perhaps a hundred and twenty-five dollars 
would be more than sufficient to complete the visitation. 
The subjects attended to have been, sources of danger to 
wells from cesspools, privies, and the liquids of barn-cellars and 
hog-pens; defective drainage and protection from the gas of 
tight drains and cesspools and set-bowls; privies, not only en- 
dangering wells, but affecting the air of the house ; wet, damp, 
or unventilated house-cellars ; the disposition of garbage, etc. 5 
The houses visited have been, the six residences on Central 
Square ; all on Main Street from said square to High and Cen- 
tre Streets; Oak Street from Main to High Street; Pearl 
Street; Broad Street from the square to High Street; Plym- 
outh Street as far as, and including, George A. Copeland’s and 
Brick-yard Lane ; Spring and Hale Streets; all but one house 
in Summer Street from the square to, and including, the house 
of Ruel Chamberlain; Bedford Street as far as Spring Hill 
Avenue; Spring Hill Avenue and Cedar Street; School and 
Grove and Church Streets; South Street as far as, and includ- 
ing, the house of J. C. Alden ; Pleasant Street as far as, and 
including, the house of Martin Swift; Mount Prospect and 
Union Streets. 
In many cases the visiting agent has been heartily thanked 
for calling attention to dangers, and feels satisfied that it is a 
good work, and of great value to many families. While he has 
met with house and barn cellars which should entitle their own- 
ers to premiums from the Agricultural Society for their neat 
and healthful condition, he has oftener met with a deplorable 
ignorance or disregard of sources of danger. 
In London, a city of 3,620,800 population, covering 122 
square miles, the annual mortality by fever has, in the last nine 
years, been reduced more than one-third of what it was annu- 
ally in the thirty previous years. 
A commission of Parliament in 1842 made a report which 
produced a profound impression, and reforms followed. They 
reported “forty-three thousand pauper widows, a great majority 
of whose husbands had been destroyed by causes easily remov- 
able. Filth and bad ventilation cost England more lives annu- 
ally than were lost by wounds and death in battle, during the 
bloodiest years of her history.” “ The annual loss of adult life, 
from causes which ought to be removed, was estimated at from 6 
thirty to forty thousand.” “ Twenty thousand deaths annually 
in England from typhoid-fever are said to be clearly traceable 
to defective drainage and the poisoning of sewer-gas.” Reports 
of physicians show that, in most cases of typhoid-fever, there 
has been found a close approximation of the well to cesspools 
and privies not water-tight, or to a broken drain-pipe. 
In some places in our own State, the rate of mortality has 
been reduced one-half or more, by proper precautionary means. 
A pure water-supply with sewerage has shown a marked diminu- 
tion of typhoid-fever in our own cities, as well as in those of 
England and Wales. 
Vaults and privies may contaminate the well-water when it 
smells and tastes sweet, and appears clear, and yet analysis has 
shown it abounding in animal and vegetable material. This 
was the case at the factory at Williamstown, where much sick- 
ness appeared, and where the privies and houses were upon a 
hill above the well. 
Where sight and smell did show pollution of a well, all the 
cases of typhoid-fever in one town, twelve in number, were of 
persons who had drank of its water within a short time pre- 
viously. 
In Scituate eight persons were taken with typhoid-fever in 
one house, and four neighbors who drank the same water, all 
within twenty-six days. The well was thirty feet from the 
privy-vault, and on lower ground, “ and in the direction of the 
water-shed.” The vault was full, but cleaned out after two 
members of the family became sick. The analysis of the 
water showed the presence of decaying matter, and of insect 
life. 
In Fairhaven, Mass., in 1879, every member of a family had 
typhoid-fever. The discharges of the first one attacked had 
passed to the privy-vault. Every person drinking of the well- 7 
water, eight in number (seven at the same time), had the fever 
within a period of twelve days of each other. A bushel of salt 
was put into the privy-vault, and another in six days, which 
soon affected the well one hundred feet distant, showing a 
communication between the two. “ No other cases of typhoid- 
fever were known to have occurred in the vicinity during the 
summer,” except those who nursed the sick and who drank 
none of this well-water. 
Typhoid and scarlet fever in its worst form affected two 
families in one house in Palmer, Mass., where the drain was 
open in the cellar, and very offensive, and only ten feet distant 
from the well. The privy was on higher ground than and 
thirty feet from the well. 
Obstructed drains in two houses in Arlington caused drain- 
gas to enter the houses. “ In one there were five cases of diph- 
theria, and one death, and one severe case of scarlet-fever.” In 
the other house three had scarlet-fever and diphtheria, and two 
of these cases were fatal. 
Pardon us, therefore, if we seek to prevent drain-gas from 
entering your houses. An open outlet at a distance from the 
house, of a tight drain, is far safer than a tight drain* with either 
an obstructed outlet or discharging into a tight cesspool with- 
out vent, and no means used to prevent the drain-gas from 
entering the house. 
We would not create needless alarm. Not all diseases are 
from the causes we mention ; some are caused by contagion, 
and many from causes yet unknown. We seek to call atten- 
tion to causes known and hitherto unconsidered, and to the 
safeguards against them. 
In our own town one well has been impregnated by brine 
discharged one hundred feet distant into a cesspool not water- 
tight; and the contents of another cesspool, with an earth 8 
bottom, found their way into a well, thirty-two feet distant, by 
means of a thin layer of clay ten feet below the surface, in- 
clined toward and markedly polluting the well. 
Well-brick are not a perfect guard against toads whose dead 
bodies pollute the water. A softened or defective brick, or 
spaces from careless laying, will admit them. The well should 
be carried much above the ground, and laid in water-cement to 
a distance of four feet below the surface; and if the outer 
surface, to the same distance below ground, and the bottom of 
the trench in which the workman stands, are likewise cemented, 
it will be better. We believe this will afford perfect protection 
against this source of pollution of our wells. 
We would advise a further appropriation to complete the 
visitation of our houses, under the direction of your Board of 
Health, if they can procure the services of a suitable visitor. 
No harm can come from it, and, in many cases, such visits are 
greatly needed. A few, days ago the State Board of Health 
notified us that it is probable that small-pox will be more or less 
prevalent in this State during the coming year; and they urge 
the vaccination of all who are unprotected, and that school 
committees should insist upon evidence of proper vaccination 
before admission to the public schools. 
L. S. HOPKINS, M.D., 
SAMUEL H. WORCESTER, M.D., 
SPENCER LEONARD, 
Town 
Board of 
Health.