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22
Medical Officers of Health Annual Report.
enforcement of more general re-vaccination, though the
Commissioners express themselves strongly in favour of
the practice.
It remains, however, for the Government to decide
what, if any, alterations in the present law would be
efficacious in attaining what the Commissioners desire
and recommend, the more thorough vaccination of the
population.
water supply. Below is printed a table extracted from the
figures of the Annual Report of Professor E. Frankland
to the Water Examiner.
In commenting on the figures the following are
extracts: "These figures show that the Thames water
distributed during the year 1896 was somewhat inferior
to that delivered during the previous year."
As to the Bacterioscopic Examination of Water,
Professor Frankland remarks that no pathogenic organism,
that is an organism that is recognised as the
cause of disease, has been found in the Thames water, and
he regards the ordinary river microbes and the bacillus
coli communis (which has been found in Thames water)
as harmless and not indicative of sewage contamination.
This conclusion is not, however, shared by other
authorities on the subject. He adds that if a pathogenic
germ should at any time be present in the raw river
water, it would be extremely unlikely to pass through an
efficient filter removing 99 out of every 100 microbes
present in the raw river water. The safeguard is, therefore,
obviously efficient filtration. With regard to the
Southwark and Yauxhall Company, he states:—
"Thus No. 3filter was not working satisfactorily in
July, Nos. 4 & 5 were uniformly and highly satisfactory