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56
the Royal Commission which relates to the quality of the present
sources of supply. The Royal Commission had before it evidence,
he says, which showed that the rivers from which the Water
Companies draw their supplies receive from the towns, situated
on their banks at varying distances above the intakes sewage
effluents, which, after treatment of the sewage, either by filtration
. through land or by chemical processes, enter smaller rivers. In
addition to these, numerous pollutions from smaller populations
discharging into cesspools and ditches reach, untreated, the
streams at times of heavy rainfall. Such sewage must not
infrequently contain the excremental matter of persons suffering
from typhoid fever and may not improbably in the future, contain
from time to time the excreta of persons suffering from cholera.
The virus of both these diseases has been found by past experience
to have been disseminated by water and to have produced
fatal results in persons drinking such water.
Not only are these diseases known to be waterborne, but
experience has shewn that a very small amount of the excremental
matter of persons suffering from them is capable under favourable
circumstances of infecting vast volumes of water.
In the present state of knowledge on such matters we are
driven back to much the same opinion as that held by the late
Sir George Buchanan, who said that he did not think that it was
possible, either by chemical, microscopical, or bacteriological
processes, to say when a water was or was not injurious, and
that there was no way of arriving at a solution of this question
except by inspecting the sources of supply, and seeing if they
were or were not polluted. According to this criterion London
river water stands absolutely and hopelessly condemned.
Although very little is definitely said on the subject, the
impression which the perusal of the report leaves upon the mind
is that the whole control of the water supply, from the sources to
the final delivery to the consumer, should be in the hands of one