Typhoid and the river-water years

1847 – 1914

The river was the water supply: typhoid arrived in the valley on Humphreys' chronology — rare before 1847, prevalent by the 1850s — and its Mishawaka chapter is the town's water. Mishawaka built its water works in 1873 (the fire-safety record independently dates the works 1873–74), and the national water-works statistics printed by J. J. R. Croes in 1885 give the system's facts in one line: built 1873, source the St. Joseph River, population served 2,640. For forty years after, the town drank the river it also drained toward — the standard American arrangement of the typhoid era, and the one the era's morbidity returns measure.

The counted return: the Indiana State Board of Health's Monthly Bulletin for December 1914, read first-hand, prints the state's typhoid morbidity by county, and its St. Joseph line is this addendum's one exact Mishawaka typhoid figure: "St. Joseph 23 (South Bend 22, Mishawaka 1)." Twenty-three reported cases in the county in that month, one of them Mishawaka's. No Mishawaka typhoid toll series, and no Mishawaka typhoid epidemic narrative, stands in any record reached; the disease appears in this town's surviving record as a line in a state table, which is the size of it and is printed as such.

South Bend's side, at boundary size: Epworth Hospital's ledger for January 1897 counts 22 typhoid cases among its 284 patients — the disease as a standing charge on the county's hospital. Howard's history of 1907 records the remedy as South Bend administered it: the city drank river water until its artesian wells — 34 sunk, then 37 more — let "the river water was turned off." No parallel Mishawaka date for leaving the river stands in the record reached, and none is borrowed from across the line; the fluoridation and water-quality record of the later town stands in the medical-advancements file, where its status is settled and its dates are that file's gaps, not this article's to fill.

Sources

1. J. J. R. Croes, History and Statistics of American Water Works, statistical tables (1885), via archive.org — Mishawaka: water works built 1873, source St. Joseph River, population 2,640.
2. Indiana State Board of Health, Monthly Bulletin, Vol. XVII, No. 12 (December 1914), read first-hand — typhoid: "St. Joseph 23 (South Bend 22, Mishawaka 1)."
3. Humphreys' 1858 address in Chapman (1880) — typhoid rare before 1847, prevalent by the 1850s.
4. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County (1907) — South Bend's artesian wells and the river water turned off; boundary-printed. Epworth Hospital ledger, January 1897 — 22 typhoid of 284 patients; boundary-printed via the South Bend record.