Subjects Public Health

Includes activities to maintain the healthfulness of the city, and the animals (such as pigs) and diseases (such as cholera, yellow fever, and typhoid fever) that were the objects of public health efforts.

Philadelphia drinking water 90+ years ago

Water Bureau Newspaper Scrapbook, 1942-1952

Dobson FLP

You would not have wanted to drink it: Philadelphia’s water supply in 1884

Color image of a grassy field with trees and buildings surrounding it and white lines drawn on the grass mimicking the path of a creek.

Drawing Dock Creek

Typhoid Fever and sewage tainted drinking water: An 1889 report from the Philadelphia Board of Health

Kensington Water Supply in 1883

Black-and-white image of a creek with people around it and a large building behind it

Dock Creek Sewer in 1849: A report on its condition made to City Councils

CITIZENS’ BUSINESS: 1939-1946

State of the Schuylkill River in 1876: Sewage pollution and possible remedies

Down Under!

Birkinbine Schuylkill Hydrographical Survey 1861-66

Two reports on the state of the Schuylkill River, 1867

Black-and-white image of an ornately lettered document with a decorative border

Images from ‘The Water Supply of the City of Philadelphia by a proposed Aqueduct from Norristown Dam’