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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1870—71.
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The condition and the supply of the water we consume, has for some time past claimed
esnecial attention, and the prospect of obtaining suitable water becomes more hopeful.
Nothing could have equalled the equanimity and patience so long shown during our supply
of "the filthiest stuff ever drunk by a civilised community; being brackish with the influence
of each tide, and contaminated with the outscourings of the metropolis, swarming with
infusorial life, and containing unmistakeable molecules of excrement (Simon)". Yet at the
very time this was the case, the Directors declared the water to be "unexceptionably good
and the Chairman from his seat of authority asserted, that a supply from the Thames at
Battersea, was inferior in no appreciable degree to the stream in any part of its course.
And the demand for change he stigmatised as "a wholly uncalled for expenditure of
capital." And worse still, eminent Chemists were found, who gave it as their opinion that
the water was not noxious to health. Long after this Dr. Ackland of Oxford said, that to
him "it was a standing miracle, that the Londoners did not rise up in arms against the
Provincials, for remorselessly pouring their sewage down upon some of their Water
Companies."
"Water is more necessary to our existence than solid food, and in this point of view
holds an intermediate rank between air and solid food, being less essential than the first,
but more so than the last." I need not say that the water supplied is much improved to
what it was a few years ago. It contains much less of "organic nitrogen;" but there still
abound in it living productions, which are supposed to be the causes of disease. Danger
exists to the consumer as long as theso are met with in the water consumed. If impure
water be passed through a sufficient depth of earth it will come up purified; all the suspended
matters, as well as the organisms, will have been separated or destroyed, and will
have served the useful purpose of giving food to the vegetable kingdom. Dr. Pranklaud
does not think the Thames water suitable for the supply of the Metropolis. But he resignedly
says that "the majority of us are doomed to drink Thames water for many years to come
although the chalk, oolite, and green sand foundations around London, contain abundance
of water which is of unsurpassed purity. Prom these sources of cool, colourless, refreshing,
and perfectly safe water, he hopes one day that this vast city will be entirely supplied. He
states that there is plenty to supply London, did it contain double the number of its present
inhabitants.