Report to the Special Sanitary Committee of the Commissioners of Sewers, on the sanitary condition of the City of London, for the three weeks ending August 11th, 1866 / by H. Letheby.

  • Letheby, H. (Henry), 1816-1876.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report to the Special Sanitary Committee of the Commissioners of Sewers, on the sanitary condition of the City of London, for the three weeks ending August 11th, 1866 / by H. Letheby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    gallon, of which only two-tenths of a grain were organic; and that of the East London Company has been 18*06 grains per gallon, four-tenths of a grain of which were organic. These proportions are below the averages for many years, and they indicate the great care and attention bestowed by the Engineers of the Companies in the filtration of the water supplied to the public ; for not many years ago the proportion of organic matter in the water was at least three times as large as it now is. It is, however, still possible that the minute germs of choleraic poison may pass the most perfect niters, and that even the most refined processes of chemistry may fail to discover them. It is, therefore, a very important question what methods should be employed to ensure their de- struction in potable water, or at any rate to deprive them of their morbific action. A reliance on chemistry alone, without assistance from the facts of physiology, would lead us into dangerous errors, for there is no proof that the common agents of oxida- tion are capable of destroying the living germs of disease. As far, indeed, as observation has yet gone, especially by the light of pathology, it would seem that the agents of many infectious diseases, as certain fevers, small-pox, the rinderpest, and even cholera, are living germs, and not dead organic vapours or miasms. The chemical agents, therefore, which are suited for the oxidation of dead organic matter passing through its final stages