Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1887 — Impurities Found in Ice. [ARTICLE]

Impurities Found in Ice.

Questions as to the dangers to health connected with the use of ice taken from certain localities are of great interest, the more so since disease produced by the use of contaminated ice could rarely be traced to its true cause, which in most cases would probably not be even suspected. Attention was, in fact, not called to this matter until 1875, when an epidemic of diarrhea at Eye Beach, N. H., was clearly traced to ice cut from a contaminated pond. Since that time the same cause has been suspected or proved in about half a dozen cases of occurrence of typhoid fever or of diarrhea. Certainly this is a very small proportion of bad results as compared with the almost universal use of ice, especially when we remember that people will cut ice from streams or ponds that they would consider too impure to furnish drinking water, because they think freezing purifies water. While the purification of water by freezing does occur to a considerable extent, it is by no means complete or to be relied on. Freezing does not destroy the vitality of some bacteria, nor does it specially tend to free the water from dead organic matter. That freezing will not destroy the life of the bacill us of typhoid fever is shown by Dr. Billings. It will be seen from what has been said that when a health authority is called on to decide whether the water of a particular stream or pond is or is not so impure that ice cut from it will probably be dangerous to health, it can only proceed on probabilities, since it will very rarely be possible to prove that ice taken from that particular locality, or even the water from the same place, has caused disease. Nevertheless, these probabilities may be quite sufficient to warrant the forbidding the sale of ice taken from a particular spot. This seems to have been the case as regards ice cut from Onondaga Lake, which the city Board of Health of Syracuse, in New York, forbade to be sold for any use which would bring it into direct contact with articles of food or drink. The firm engaged in packing and selling this ice objected to this interference with their business, whereupon Mr. James T. Gardner investigated the matter for the State Board of Health, which has published his report. Mr. Gardner found that Onondaga Lake is contaminated with sewage ; that the contamination is increasing from the sewers of Syracuse, and that ice taken from it contains living bacteria of various kinds, and about ten per cent, of the sewage matters in the water from which it is formed. He, "therefore, approves the order of the city Board of Health, and the propriety and wisdom of this decision can hardly be questioned.—Sanitary Engineer. A patented invention, called the the art -of- writing possible in the absence hr uselessness of the hand. It is therefore serviceable in cases of writers’ cramp and of paralysis of the fingers. The instrument, is of simple construction, and consists of a long, light strip of iron, curved so as to be easily adapted to the ulnar border of the forearm. This Splint is Bewed into a casing of supple leather materia], shaped so as to form a kind of gauntlet or sleeve for the forearm. The. gauntlet is fastened to the forearm by an ingenious arrangement of screw-hooks

and studs, allowing of an adjustable degree of pressure. The bar or splint carries at its lower end a mechanism with a universal joint by means of which a pen may bebeld in any desired position. With this instrument the act of writing is performed by the muscles of the arm and shoulder, while those of the digits and thumb are thrown completely out of usa It is easy to acquire the necessary dexterity in the use of the invention for legible “handwriting.”