River water and dissemination of disease / by George Wilson.

  • Wilson, George.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: River water and dissemination of disease / by George Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    the consumption of the water from the Thames and Lea as delivered by the Companies,” and to support this statement, they enter into a calculation which goes to show that it “ would take nearly half-a-million cases of Typhoid Fever occurring within a fortnight, with all the evacuations passed directly into the Thames, to effect a degree of pol- lution of the water, after filtration,” mind you, “equal to the pollution which caused the Caterham outbreak.” They enter into a similar calculation in respect to the painstaking inquiry of Dr. Barry into the serious outbreak of Typhoid Fever in the Tees Valley in 1890 and 1891, which he traced to the consumption of water taken from the Tees, and delivered after filtration by the Darlington Corporation and Stockton and Middlesborough Water Board. Relying on this calcula- tion, and basing their opinion on the fact that there was no direct proof of specific pollution above the intake, and that, if specific pollution did take place, it was at a distance of seventeen miles above ; and backed up, moreover, by the counter-statements of the repre- sentative of the Waterworks Company, they virtually give a ver- dict of “ not proven,” and attach no weight to Dr. Barry’s conclu- sions, which implicated the filtered water of the Tees, but give special prominence to the arguments and counter-statements advanced by the Company’s representative. But though the Royal Commission could see no indication of risk to the London consumers of the Thames or Lea water-supplies as afforded by the Caterham outbreak, or the Tees Valley epidemic, or, indeed, by any of the previous outbreaks of Cholera or Enteric Fever to which I have alluded, there are several epidemics referred to in Prof. Koch’s monograph on Water Filtration and Cholera which are highly instructive, and which in most important particulars strongly militate against the optimistic views of the Royal Commission. Let me now briefly direct attention to the main facts connected with some of these outbreaks. Hamburg and Altona are contiguous towns, and, along with Wandsbeck, may be regarded as a single community, but with this difference, that each has a separate and a different kind of water-supply. Hamburg at the date of the Cholera outbreak of 1892 took its water directly and unfiltered from the Elbe, at a point where the river is but relatively little polluted, but at high tides may become exceptionally polluted by the sewage discharged into the river