Volume 2

Report on water supply and sewerage.

  • Massachusetts. State Board of Health.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on water supply and sewerage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/964 (page 9)
    the fundamental principles of filtration not previously established, and to learn what can practically be accomplished by filters made of some of the widely varying materials found in suitable localities for filtration areas, that there may be deduced from these results, together with the quality and physical characteristics of the materials used, the probable eflaciency of other materials to be found through- out the State. About four thousand chemical analyses of the sewage applied to the tanks and of the filtered effluent have been made in twenty-two months, the results of which are given in accompanying tables. These analyses have been made under the direction and careful superintendence of Prof. T. M. Drown, — in part at the laboratory of the Board at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and in part at the laboratory of the Board in Lawrence. The experiments upon the filtration of water and of sewage, and upon chemical precipitation of sewage, have been organized and carried on under the direction of the writer, who has been most ably supported by Professor Drown and by Mr. Allen Hazen, chemist in charge of the laboratory in Lawrence, both of whom have devoted their scientific ability, not only to the technical work of obtaining the results of analyses, but to the interpretation of results, and to the establishment of series of experiments upon the filtration of chemical substances analogous to difierent elements of sewage, that they might have more definite data to aid in the inter- pretation of the results obtained with sewage. These experiments are described, together with the methods of analysis when differ- ing from those usually practised, in the reports of these chemists, appended. Observati(ms upon the number of bacteria, living in the sewage and in the various effluents, have been made during the two years by different observers, as follows : From November, 1887, to June, 1888, by Dr. E. K. Dunham; from June to August, by Mr. H. L. Grant; through September and October, 1888, by Mr. G. E. Tucker. In November, 1888, this department was reorganized and placed under the superintendence of Prof. Wm. T. Sedgwick, who has been ably supported by Mr. E. O. Jordan. The examination of microscopic organisms was, during the first year, under the care of Mr. G. II. Parker, Mr. C. B. Davenport, observer; and during the second year, under the care of Professor Sedgwick, Mr. G. L. West, observer.