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is not confined to the district in question, but extends
to the whole Metropolis. Officers of health have,
therefore, had to allay the feeling of alarm, and in
one case it has been made the subject of a special
report. Thus Dr. Whitmore, who, like myself, has
been engaged for years past in examining the water
of his district, gives assurance to his vestry that it
is "excellent in quality and perfectly wholesome."
The subject has also commanded the attention of
Dr. Alfred Swaine Taylor, F.R.S., the Professor of
Medical Jurisprudence, and late Professor of Chemistry
at Guy's Hospital, whose published report is
before me. "There has been of late years," he
says, "a great outcry on the subject of 'sewage contamination,'
and some sanitary reformers have gone
so far as to describe the Thames water as so much
'diluted sewage.'" "Dr. Whitmore," he says,
"finds neither sewage nor the products of sewage
decomposition in the water supplied by the West
Middlesex Company. This, he adds, "is quite
in accordance with the results which I have
obtained by an examination of the water supplied
to my house. Since the threatened approach
of cholera in 1870—71, I have, for my own information,
frequently examined the water for the products
of decomposition, but have found none. As to 'previous
sewage contamination,' I believe it to be a
myth, if we are to understand thereby that the