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81
the swimming baths of the Borough could be kept pure, purified,
or sterilised by means of the Electrolytic Fluid. Mr. Councillor
Barge devoted a large amount of time to this most important
matter. Mr. Councillor Barge was present at the experiments, and
the then Chairman of the Public Health and Housing Committee was
also present and took part in one of the experiments. For financial
reasons water in public swimming baths cannot be constantly changed, and
it is obvious that after a large number of persons have bathed in the same
water, more especially persons who have no convenient and proper bathing
arrangements in their own homes, the water must become charged with
impurities, polluted with organic matter and permeated with bacteria—
the organic matter from the bodies forming a good medium for the bacteria
to feed upon and thereby multiply; moreover, it cannot be concealed that
swimming baths may, without detection, be used by persons who are
unconsciously or otherwise suffering from communicable disease or from
such diseases as may have a tendency to further pollute, i.e., skin
maladies. In the act of swimming, as in all other exercises, the skin helps
to eliminate the waste matter accumulating in the blood due—so to speak
—to the expenditure of the fuel which maintains the swimmer's energy.
This waste matter with perspiration is also absorbed by the water.
It is a well-known fact that the water in swimming baths remains
clearer longer at the latter part than at the first part of the bathing season
for the simple reason that skins of some of the habitual bathers become
more and more cleansed, t
* In order to give some idea of the size of the germs of disease, and the tremendous
vital activity possessed by them, which disinfection aims at destroying, I will quote
Cohn, who estimated that a single bacillus weighs about 0.000,000,000,024,243,672 of a
grain; forty thousand millions, 1 grain; 289 billions, 1 pound. After twenty-four
hours the descendants from a single bacillus would weigh of a grain; after two
days, over a pound; after three days, sixteen and half million pounds, or 7,366 tons.
Of course, these figures would apply if there were a continual supply of food, and no
impediments—which, fortunately for us, are many—to the growth of such germs,
fresh air and sunlight being our ohief protectors. "Let us assume," says Cohn,
" that a microbe divides into two within an hour, then again into eight in the third
hour, and so on. The number of microbes thus produced in twenty-four hours would
exoeed sixteen and a half millions; in two days they would increase to forty-seven
trillions; and in a week the number expressing them would be made up of fifty-one
figures. At the end of twenty-four hours the microbes descended from a single
individual would occupy 1/40th of a hollow cube, with edges 1/25th of an inch long, but at
the end of the following day would fill a space of 27 cubic inches, and in less than five
days their volume would equal that of the entire ocean."
† At the public baths of the Borough for the sum of one penny a child can have a