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13
not continue to prefer London pump water if it was
generally injurious to health. At times it may he, as
during the prevalence of diarrhoea and cholera; let us
at such times boil all the water used for drink; hut if
we find that the majority of people at all other times do
partake largely of London pump water, not only without
injury to health, but positive advantage, let us not
on theory condemn our pumps because their water
ought to be unwholesome, when practically it is the
reverse. At the same time it behoves our governing
bodies to have all wells periodically cleansed; and where
they are so situated as to be incurably subject to contamination,
to have them closed altogether. But it also
behoves the governing body of any parish or district
when it is found necessary to close a well, to establish
at least one other, so placed that it will not be subject
to the contamination of sewerage. I conceive a superficial
well in the centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields would
be too far away from drains to be injured. In such
spaces we might dig our wells, and conduct the water by
impermeable piping wherever it is required, and there
place our pump.
There is one view of the case in relation to the state
of our river which does not appear to me to have been
sufficiently attended to. When we contemplate on the
great scale of Nature, the modes she adopts for the destruction
of putrescency and offensive fermentation, we
find that all natural operations for this purpose are based
on the principle of converting as rapidly as possible
dead animal and vegetable remains into living organisms.
I need not refer to the instances where, in hot
climates, the putrefying remains of a large animal will
be consumed by living vultures, adjutants, &c. Let us
take the slower process in colder climates where dead
animal and vegetable matter is consumed by innumerable
insects and converted into living tissues. It is