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Show LEADVILLE, COLO. A staff correspondent of the Pueblo Chieftain writes to his parer, under date of Jan. 30: It is now about six weeks since the prevalence of a fever, over the character charac-ter of which local physicians have not entirely agreed. became general throughout the city proper of Lead-ville. Lead-ville. I say city proper, because the notable fact that the outlying commu-j commu-j iiities where the city water supply'is not used have been entirely free from . the disease. The first case of fever j was in the- latter part of August and I early in September iu the person of a Finnish miner, who came into town to I lonsult a physician after having been skk for some time. The physician did j not get precise information regarding his residence, but in a general way rein re-in mbers that he was from the region north of the city, which is the dii-ec- ! tion from which the water supply, of the city comes. The city water is supplied sup-plied by two streams coming from the mountains, their watersheds being almost al-most devoid of human habitation, yet it is possible that contamination may have been added the stream above the open reservoir which furnishes the direct di-rect supply. It is also possible that, as during the fall months, there was an entire absence of rain and early snows, the winds which at times prevail from the southeast, though generally from the north, may have carried clouds ot dust over the open reservoir, though this is less likely than that there was direct contamination from some case of fever. There can hardly be utiy question that the epidemic existing in the city csme from the water supply in ; some way or other, for ita appearance was so-uniformly distributed over the city that no other article of consumption consump-tion could by any possibility be responsible respon-sible for it. - - - , There have been altogether probably i about 50) cases, with about twenty fatalities fa-talities from the fever alone, and there are, as near as can . be-. ascertained, about 400 cases in the city at this time, but as there have been no new cases for several . days, it seems probable that the force of the epidemic is broken brok-en and that whatever may have been the condition giving rise to;the fever, that the cause has ceased to be active, and that it is now simply a matter of the disease running out in those already al-ready attacked. |