Typhoid Outbreak Traced to Wapato Creek Dairies
City and state health officials issue urgent sanitation ultimatum to local dairymen after tracing typhoid fever cases to contaminated creek water.
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Dairymen who sell milk in Tacoma have received a letter from Dr. L. L. Love, city health commissioner, and Dr. James R. Yocom of the state board of health. For ten or twelve weeks, there have been cases of typhoid fever on a farm near the head of Wapato Creek. The germs of typhoid are now in the waters of the creek. A number of cases—in fact, nearly all the cases in Tacoma—have been getting milk from the dairy on this creek, either from cows getting udders and teats polluted in the creek or slough, or from water from the creek getting into their cans during washing or cooling. To avoid this source of danger to the public, it is necessary for you to closely follow these suggestions: First, before milking, have each milker wash off udders and teats of his cows with water to which is added one teaspoonful of formalin or formaldehyde. Second, be sure that none but boiling or boiled water is used to clean cans. Third, be sure that no unboiled water from the creek or slough or wells near it gets into milk cans at any time. Fourth, once a week wash out the milk-house and can racks with water to which one teaspoonful of formalin or formaldehyde has been added. If typhoid fever continues to be brought about and scattered from this source, milk from this creek district cannot be sold.
“The germs of typhoid are now in the waters of the creek... It is dangerous at present.”
Public health infrastructure in early 20th-century Tacoma relied heavily on individual compliance among small-scale producers. Today, we take for granted the industrial-scale sanitation standards, but the vulnerability of our water supply—whether from creek runoff or aging infrastructure—remains a persistent civic anxiety.
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