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Show Well ttakr. Salt Lake. City, Jan. 23, '79. Editor Ikmld: In the Herald . f the Slat, "Taxpayer" "Tax-payer" credi s well --'r. tftiDled b' the drainage (rum manure used in garden culture, with bting the cause of diphtheria. It may be so, but I do not cjnaider the caso proved. I think it very doubtful. The proportion propor-tion of people in this city who drink well water is not wry luge. Some take pipe water. Most take creek and ditch water. Now, the ditch water, much of the time, is moat . filthy, and I ennui i think it far more likely, than well walir lo be the cauBe of diseas?. In port. una of the 20lh and Slat waids, water is hauled several blocks from the ditches and, I beir, it Bometimes b'-tnds in the. tub in some houses uu.il it ets alatmut and oven ropy, in hut weather, aul bti!l e used for drinking aul utht-r uuaiest'c purposes. In my opinion, ruin water 13 far more liable than ordinary Well water to cause' disce. Then the pitches in Iho lower wards cMch the draining and euuio other filth fruiu the upper wards. Such water, whun drunk, can scarcely prove beuencial to health. Spreading manure upon toe surface sur-face of tbo soil, and plowing or dig ging (he manure in, is nerhapa one of the beet tneau3 available of deodor izing it and thus purilying the air or preventing it from being greatly vitiated. Tbe eoil is a natural deodorizer, and one of the cheapest aw! mnat .mdilaMa T Hnuhl anu most eaeny avaiiaute. i aouot that wells, where properly banked up bo as to be secure from surface drainage, are seriously affected by the manure used in lots and gardens, except they be very shallow wells, or possibly in a few other ejtreuie cases. Diphtheria nourishes elsewhere than in cities, and wells are much less ueed in the country settlements than in the city. -.i, In some countries, rainy countries, with which many of your readers are well acquainted, gardens iu many towns, no better provided with sewerage sewer-age than this is, have been manured every year for generations, and yet in j those towns, closely inhabited as most of them ate, diphtheria has never been either epidemic or endemic bo far as I have heard, and yet those towns have used well water and no other for domestio purposes. Some of the wells in this city may be poiBoned b.-.dly from another source than manuring the lots. Iu various parts of the city there are uncemented privy vaults and deep privy pita, never cleaned out from year to year. It has been asserted by scientific experts, ex-perts, I believe, that deleterious drainage from such vaults and pits will injure the water of wells within a radius of a hundred feet. In my opinion euch deadly vaults and pits should be rigidly prohibited by municipal muni-cipal ordinance, under an exceedingly exceed-ingly severe penalty. I cousidei- the soil of cultivated land, within a foot of the Burface, the very safest place for the deodorizing of all excretion and manure, unless such .material ia taken and dumped into the Salt Lake. i . . Cultivator. |