Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The adulteration of food. 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.
5/12 page 195
![Impure Water. 1855.] printing the names unreservedly of those who sold nefarious articles, and of those who offered genuine mate- rials to the public. It is impossible to overrate the value of this plan for the public benefit, or the able manner in which the investigation was pro- secuted. One of the most important sub- jects investigated by Or. Hassall was that of the water supplied to the metropolis. Who has not read the description of the magnificent Homan aqueducts by which water was brought from pure mountain springs at a distance from the haunts of men ? Although the liber flowed through the city of Home, its waters were rejected because it was known more than twro thousand years ago that water from such a source was unwholesome. And yet here we are, in the metropolis of the world, in the year of grace eighteen hundred and fifty-five, not only swallowing the disgustingly polluted Thames water, but positively paying handsomely for the privilege. It does appear that our exclusively classical education has conferred little practical benefit upon us. Every one may now know, from the Heports of the Board of Health quoted at the beginning of this article, that the Thames at London, from which two of our water com- panies obtain their supply, and which is distributed to Southwark, Chelsea, and Westminster, con- sists of river water, mixed twice a-day with sea water, with the disgusting contents of sewers, and consequently of all the debris of the metropolitan population — of portions of our food which nature has rejected as pernicious and unwholesome, and of products of intestinal disease. Whether we shut our eyes to the facts or not, the smallest reflection must produce the conviction that these abomina- tions must be present in the water. Let any one who has any scepticism on the subject, and who is acquainted with the use of the microscope, or has a friend supplied with a good instrument, make this experiment. During the time that the water of the Southwark Company is flowing into a cistern let him tie over the mouth of the service pipe a piece of muslin, and allow it to remain till the water has ceased to flow. On unloosing the muslin it will be found to be covered with a black sedi- ment. And if a portion of this be placed under the microscope with a power of 200 diameteis, little yellowish masses will be detected in abundance, which, with a higher power, will be found crossed by delicate ridges. These minute bodies are portions of excrement. All this has been pointed out by the Board of Health Heports, and the demonstration afforded that London is traversed by a mighty open sever, steaming off its miasms on its on- ward progress, and dealing out a source of disease to all around. It does not signify that whole Blue Books have been filled by the evi- dence of witnesses, adduced by in- terested water companies, who did not see these things, as they did not look for them. It is undeniable that for years upon years the popu- lation on the Surrey side of the river has been supplied with this horrible jakes-house mixture, and even now it labours under the same infliction. And to make matters worse, men have been found who have blasphemously attributed dis- ease occurring among the people consuming such an unwholesome beverage to the hand of an all-wise and benevolent Creator. It is true the Thames companies are about to obtain their water supply from Thames Ditton. But this is only a slight amelioration of the objection .—the Thames is still there, the sewer of the districts which it tra- verses bearing with it the disgusting rejecta of the population residing on its banks, and the drainage of the manured lands of the central and western parts of the country. Those water companies which do not de- rive their supplies from the Thames, are more or less liable to the objec- tion that the streams, canals, and wells from which their waters flow are exposed to the access of vast quantities of impurities, derived from ever-passing nuisances, from the surrounding spongy soil satu- rated with filth, necessarily induced by the surrounding population. The question of the water supply of London is one of pressing import- ance to the health and interests of a mighty people—it is one whose](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2246766x_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
