Horizontal wells : a new application of geological principles to effect the solution of the problem of supplying London with pure water / by J. Lucas.

  • Lucas, J.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Horizontal wells : a new application of geological principles to effect the solution of the problem of supplying London with pure water / by J. Lucas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    innocuous by boiling, brewing, mixing, &c.; and though the water may be pure enough, in a general sense, when most of the population only rarely drink water, yet the evil effects at present due to it would have to be multiplied many fold were all the inhabitants water- drinkers. This consideration is an important one when dealing with the question of health, for the worst effects are those to be considered, and not the average effect on a mixed population of water-drinkers and persons who rarely touch plain water. The average result is deceptive, and tends to lower the standard of purity of water requisite ; thus causing the bad results to fall very heavily upon those who drink much water. No tables are at hand to help out this line of argument, but the ultimate result is plain, and may be thus stated: that, until it can be proved that the noxious qualities of sewage all disappear on the oxidation of their vehicles in a water, it is a dangerous experiment to offer that water for drinking, even after the oxidation of the sewage; and no chemist or medical man has, as yet, any right to say that such a water is harmless. This is the case with the Thames. To recapitulate. Much sewage finds its way to the Thames above Hampton, the point from whence the Companies draw their supplies; though this sewage is nearly entirely oxidized before then, still so much of it remains in the water as to leave the water far less pure than it exists at points near the springs from which the river derives: therefore it is capable of further jmrification than it receives before delivery in London. Medical analysis cannot pronounce upon its ultimate purity, since it cannot detect the presence of minute living germs of disease or organisms in a water, and therefore cannot tell whether some may not survive till the water is again imbibed. As such organisms are probably mostly killed by the process of boiling, brewing, &c., the water is thereby rendered pure enough for general consumption when mixed ; but the standard of purity requisite for the water to attain to is thereby lowered. This lowering of the standard is in itself bad; and, since the above remarks apply to the Thames and the water taken from it, it would be safer to condemn that river as a source of supply, and quit it if a better can be found within a reasonable distance of London. With respect to the quantity of water required, Mr. Bateman and Messrs. Hemans and Hassard remark that ‘ it is scarcely possible for the Companies to afford a supply much larger in quantity or better in quality than that at present furnished.’ ‘ They will hardly be permitted
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