This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Remember that summer you were going to get rich going door to door selling pots and pans to newlyweds? You learned how difficult selling can be. You'll understand the frustration of Dr. Calvin Truesdale of Rock Island. In the winter of 1876-77, he discovered that un-selling is even harder than selling.That winter, hundreds of Rock Islanders became horribly ill. People invented a disease to explain it. "Winter Cholera," they said. They told each other that the cause was unfortunate atmospheric conditions.
Dr. Truesdale wasn't so sure. He pointed out to the city fathers that no one in nearby Moline or Davenport living in the same atmospheric conditions was getting ill.
The good doctor suspected the Rock Island water supply. whose intake was in Sylvan Slough in the direct path of raw sewage from Moline and the Rock Island Arsenal.
"Prove it," said the city fathers. Dr. Truesdale admitted that science of bacteriology was not advanced enough for a chemical analysis to show that the water was being poisoned, but he did point out that Rock Islanders who drank from their own wells were not getting sick. The winter cholera spread.
Then Dr. Truesdale discovered miniscule floating particles in the Rock Island water and showed the city fathers. "Animalculae," he said. "Little animals."
"Looks like breadcrumbs to us," the city fathers said.
Some suspicious person must be putting bread in the water supply.
Rock Island might still be known for its bread crumb water had Dr. Truesdale not launched a campaign in the newspaper accusing the city fathers of "sanitation by whitewash," and had not the winter turned cold enough to break Rock Island's water mains which had been laid too shallow and adjacent to the sewer lines to save money. Without ever admitting that Dr. Truesdale had been right, the new mains were laid much deeper. The work must somehow have affected the atmospheric conditions, which improved immediately, dispersing the winter cholera in Rock Island.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
