Report of the Medical commission upon the sanitary qualities of the Sudbury, Mystic, Shawshine, and Charles River waters.

  • Boston (Mass.). Medical Commission on Sanitary Qualities of the River Waters.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Medical commission upon the sanitary qualities of the Sudbury, Mystic, Shawshine, and Charles River waters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    elsewhere, and that the prevalence of some zymotic diseases is ascribed to locality, malaria, heat, cold, variations of tem- perature, moral depression, and other intangible influences which could be entirely removed by the general disuse of impure water. That, as it required long years of observation to estab- lish the noxious influence of Thames water in Millbank, even when well filtered, under conditions very favorable for detec- tion, we should be cautious in accepting the opinion, based on the results of chemical analysis, that the use of that water by the population of London is free from danger. Wra. Budd, M.D., F.R.S., in his work entitled Typhoid Fever, its Nature, Mode of Spreading, and Prevention, 1873, says:— Now I have no difficulty in at once giving my opinion that all the emanations from the sick are, in a certain degree, infectious. At the same time, it is one of the principal objects of the work to show that what is cast off from the intestines is incomparably more virulent than anything else. Mr. J. Simon, F.R.S., Medical Officer to the Privy Coun- cil, and Surgeon to St. Thomas' Hospital, in giving evidence before the Royal Commission on Water Supply of London, said : — I think that where the population of any town shows a considerable amount of diarrhoea, and also of typhoid fever, it makes one believe that there must be some impurity in the water at times, and the health of the people as regards those diseases of the intestine seems to be very much in- fluenced by the purity or impurity of its water-supply (P. 73) Q. But you have not been able in all those cases of sus- picion [cholera in London] to trace the cause of the evil which has arisen from the use of those waters? A. There are certain organic matters in water, peaty matters, for instance, as to which I do not know, of my own
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