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number, are ready at bidding to commit perjury, that the leakage from the
Lea Cut has taken place, that the foul water has been distributed, and that
the poison has been sent forth to the public.
A difficulty at once arises touching the chemical character of the water.
Dr. Frankland finds it to contain, on the 1st of July, 1.40 grain in reduced
numbers, to make it square with the estimate of another analyst, or nearly
one and a-half grain of organic matter in the imperial gallon. Dr. Letheby's
investigation, on the contrary, 40 of a grain, or less than one-third of the
result of Dr. Frankland. Here are the results of Dr. Letheby's experiments
for G months—in April, 1866, .40, not half a grain; May, .40; June, .10;
July, .40; August, .56; September, .39. So that it is worthy of remark
that while the water, at the time of the Cholera "explosion" in July, was, in
the opinion of one Professor, unusually bad—never worse—a point on which
of course great stress has been laid; yet, according to the experiments of
another equally distinguished Chemist, at the same time, it was never better.
If the waters had been identical, the results would have corresponded. Dr.
Letheby took his sample from the main that supplies the London Hospital
and that part of Whitechaple My enquiries have not elicited the precise
locality of the other experiment, the Professor best knows where.
We are very properly informed, at the same time, that the water may
be extremely poisonous, and yet not in any way to be detected by the most
delicate Chemical Analysis. Farther, in order to put the public on their
guard, they are informed, so deadly is the Choleraic poison in some cases in
the water, that even boiling it will not destroy the germs of the organism
productive of the disease.
But we pass on. Let us now watch it, teeming with all these perils, to
its destination. It acts like no other poison : it appears influenced by a kind
of barometical pressure ; it seeks a low level for victims; and at an altitude
is all but powerless for destruction. There is graduated scale of death about
it. From 2 to 10 feet elevation above Trinity High Water Mark it kills
103 ; at 10 to 20 feet, 10G ; from 20 to 40 feet, G7 ; from 40 to GO feet,
17; at 76 feet, only 4 as at Stamford Hill; while at 2 feet, as in the district of
St. John's, in St. George's-in-the-East, 200 it slays in each 10,000 persons.
It was sought to explain the Stamford Hill immunity by supposing that
gravitation had to do with it, and that the particles of Choleraic matter be-