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Sanitary Circumstances.
2l
"sumption of water progressively increases, the volume of river
"water meanwhile remaining constant.
"4. Within recent years a marked improvement has taken
"place in the methods of purifying sewage, so as to render the
"resulting effluents non-putrescible and chemically unobjectionable.
"Apart from sterilization, however, no known practical process has
"yet been found which turns out a "safe" effluent; bacteriologi"cally,
and the great majority even of chemically-satisfactory
"effluents are swarming with excremental bacteria. It is possible
"that improved methods of purification will, in a chemical sense,
"keep pace with increasing pollutions of the rivers Thames and
"Lea, but the outlook bacteriologically is less hopeful.
"5. Prospective legislation as regards sewage purification
"would seem likely to run on the common sense lines of protecting
"the general interests of the community at large, leaving to
"individual authorities, who venture to utilise polluted rivers for
"waterworks purposes, the full responsibility of employing such
"superadded processes of purification as the particular necessities
"of their own case demand.
"6. Belief in the future "safety" of London, as regards
"Water Supply, ought not to depend on the chimerical hope that
"the Thames and Lea are destined to become progressively less
"impure, but on the increased knowledge as to the best means of
" purifying the water before it is sent into consumption.
"7. Whilst it is true that the raw Thames and Lea contain
"B. coli in undesirable numbers, it is a point in their favour that
"faecal streptococci are seldom discoverable in one cubic centi"metre
amounts of the water.
"8. Further, the results of a most elaborate search for the
"typhoid bacillus and Gartner's bacillus have yielded practically