Raw sewage has many kinds of bacteria in it. Some of these are very dangerous. The bacteria that cause cholera and dysentery are found in raw sewage. This is why there are problems with cholera and dysentery when floods or earthquakes break water or sewer lines. People can help to stop infectious diseases from spreading by getting rid of garbage and standing water, and by making sure that raw sewage is not left lying around.

What Is An Epidemic?
Sometimes, lots of people will catch the same disease around the same time. This is called an epidemic.

What Is "Summer Complaint"?
Every summer, before drinking water was purified, the water that people drank would grow many kinds of bacteria. When the weather was hot and dry, more bacteria would grow. Some of these bacteria did not make adults very sick, but they caused babies to vomit and have diarrhea. Because this happened in the summer, this sickness was called "summer complaint."

Infectious Diseases

Children who are underfed and unhealthy will die of a sickness that would not kill a stronger child. Almost every year, there were epidemics of infectious diseases. In 1916, for example, at least 5,000 people in St. John's got sick during an epidemic of measles.¹⁴ In 1937, mumps caused the deaths of many children.

Other illnesses caused diarrhea and vomiting. Cholera and dysentery are very dangerous diseases that live in unclean drinking water. In St. John's, epidemics of cholera and dysentery began with bad water. But, because people lived in poor housing without running water and proper sewage, these diseases also spread from person to person. In 1928 an outbreak of cholera killed many children in St. John's.