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29
a thick embankment, and so obtained access to the
water of the uncovered reservoir; that on a certain
day some of this water was admitted into the
covered reservoir, from which the public supply
was taken; and that it was thus distributed to the
district supplied to the Company. But if, for the
sake of argument, it were admitted that all this did
in reality happen, it would be a curious mathematical
problem to determine what was the degree of
final dilution after the alvine matters had entered the
sewers, then the river Lea, then the open reservoir,
and, lastly, the covered reservoir; for it is not supposed
that the choleraic discharges were bodily conveyed
to the covered reservoir, but that only a small
portion of each of the successive dilutions became
mixed with larger and larger volumes of water.*
Apart, however, from the improbabilities of
these assumptions, it is a fact that the water which
is said to have been thus polluted did not produce
its effects in the several districts to which it was
distributed in anything like uniformity of time or
force. Suppose, by way of illustration, that alcohol
or arsenic had become mixed with the water, and
*I need not discuss another supposed source of pollution, the cholera
cases at Theydon Bois, eleven miles from the works, for that hypothesis is
abandoned.