Typhoid epidemic in Lebach
The Lebach typhus epidemic was a major epidemic in the Lebach area , Saarlouis district , in the winter of 1902/03.
course
The Lebach typhus epidemic was triggered by the use of drinking and industrial water from a stream. In December 1902, a toddler in Henselhofen was reported to have had typhus. In the household in which the child lived, water from the Theel was not used as drinking water, but as service water. A second case of illness became known a little later; a young woman from Aschbach also suffered from typhus. In Aschbach, a small stream that flowed into the Theel was used for water supply.
An investigative commission now dealt more closely with the residents of this body of water and found that in November 1902 a typhus case had already occurred in a household at the end of the village that also used the stream water. However, the illness of a fifteen-year-old boy had not been reported to the authorities. About 1.5 kilometers upstream, the investigative committee found another find. Here, in the hamlet of Homesmühle, a one and a half year old girl was discovered whose typhoid fever was neither reported nor given medical treatment. In the hamlet there was neither a hygienically safe water supply nor septic tanks for the sewage; the bacilli could get unhindered into the stream, from which the Aschbacher supplied themselves with water.
The germs were spread further by the infected from Homesmühle and Aschbach via the neighboring villages of Thalexweiler and Steinbach . At the end of December 1902, the inadequate hygienic conditions in Thalexweiler in particular ensured that the disease spread rapidly: the toilet in the Linnebach inn in Thalexweiler was also open to all visitors who made their purchases in the colonial goods point of sale in this inn. This included the residents of Homesmühle. However, the pit of the abortion was leaky and a well-used pump well was only about ten meters away from this pit, so that the well water was eventually contaminated with germs. Around 30 people fell ill in quick succession, around 20 of them in Thalexweiler itself.
The health authorities quickly intervened and had a barrack camp built on the outskirts of Thalexweiler, which was ready for occupancy on January 23, 1903. There the sick could be isolated and treated. In the course of 1903 48 people were cared for in this camp. After the epidemic in the Lebach area was suppressed, the barracks continued to be used in Dirmingen from 1904 .
Fighting typhus in southwest Germany
In order to carry out extensive investigations into these epidemics, the investigation commission was set up, which consisted of experts from the Reich Health Office and the Institute for Infectious Diseases in Berlin . Initially active in the Trier area, this commission was expanded in 1902. Parts of the Koblenz administrative district were examined alongside the Trier district and a second examination station was set up in Saarbrücken . Finally, the decree of April 23, 1907 came into effect , concerning the aspects for obtaining usable, hygienically perfect water. in force.
The places where typhus had spread in 1902/03 had to wait for years for a central water supply. Lebach received a waterworks in 1913, Aschbach in 1928 and Thalexweiler in 1930.
See also
literature
- Hans-Henning Krämer: From the village well to the waterworks. History of the drinking water supply on the Saar. Gollenstein Verlag 1999, ISBN 3-933389-07-0 , p. 128 ff.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Krämer 1999, p. 266 ff.