A handbook of sewage utilization / by Ulick Ralph Burke.

  • Burke, Ulick Ralph, 1845-1895.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handbook of sewage utilization / by Ulick Ralph Burke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/84 (page 4)
    t TREATMENT OF SEWAGE. village of Terling, reports [Tenth Report of Medical Officer of Privy Council, 1867], that the outbreak was caused by the drinking of water from certain wells; chemical analysis did not discover any noxious substance in the water, but the ana- lytical results gave for three of the wells a previous sewage or animal contamination as follows:— Well 1.—Previous sewage or animal contamination in 100,000 parts of water 24 850 Well 2.—Ditto 9)'1G0 Pump.—Ditto 10,980 This is an amount of pollution hardly conceivable, being in the case of well No. 1 nearly one quarter of the entire volume of water. Again, at Guildford, in 1867, in consequence of an outbreak of typhoid fever, Dr. Buchanan went down to make investigation as to the causes, and turned his attention to a new well which had for a short time supplied over three hundred houses, many of which were visited by the epidemic. It was found that a sewer ran within 10 feet of the well, and that the sewage leaked through the joints of the brickwork and saturated the soil just above the spring which supplied the well. The water was afterwards analyzed, and although no ingredient was found that could be pronounced noxious, the results showed that each 100,000 lbs. of it had been previously polluted with a quantity of animal matter equiva- lent to that found in 7330 lbs. of average London sewage. [1 B. P. G, 114. See also on this subject, Royal Commission on Water Supply, 1869 ; Evidence of Mr. Simon, Minutes of Evidence, p. 167; and that of Drs. E. Parizes, Farr, Letheby, Brodie, Frankland, and other celebrated analysts. Beport, pp. 73-94.] As the evidence of these gentlemen may be somewhat diffi- cult to be understood by those who are not practical chemists, especially as to how water, in which no present impurity is