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strated to have caused choleraic disease, were found to communicate
directly with drains or cesspools. Indeed, there is no
point more clearly established in sanitary science, than that
injurious effects have arisen from the ingestion of water contaminated
with unaltered, or almost unaltered, sewage. The case is
not equally well established against shallow well waters in general,
in which the contaminating sewage has undergone very considerable
oxidation. Yet, as a matter of precaution, I should be
strongly inclined to avoid and prohibit the use of those in which
the organic matter exceeded four or five grains per gallon, unless
a more detailed analysis indicated the inoffensive character
of the water. One mode in which water is rendered impure, is
the storage of it in open butts or cisterns, which are rarely ever
cleansed. Thus, while the organic matter in the water supplied
has not amounted to two grains in a gallon, I have found the
same water in the butts of poor neighbourhoods to contain as
much as four, five, and six grains ; whereby the provisions of the
Metropolis Water Act for supplying, at a great expense, pure
water to London, are rendered almost nugatory."