Sewerage and Sewage Disposal / by Henry Robinson.

Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sewerage and Sewage Disposal / by Henry Robinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    into a river, it is difficult to arrive at an agreement that will apply fairly to all rivers. The words “poisonous,” “noxious,” or “pollut- ing ” solid or liquid matter fail to define that which causes injury to fish. The late Frank Buckland objected to these words in considering the way that polluting matter affected fish, and he pointed out that a fish is influenced by pollution more through the medium of the gills than through the stomach. An animal destroyed by prussic acid may be said to be poisoned, but fish are destroyed more by suffoca- tion, the gills being always found to be the structure mostly affected. He noticed that a fish poisoned by pollution, generally speaking, died with the gills and mouth widely extended, as if it were gasping for breath, the gills being the mechanism by which oxygen is absorbed from the water. A distinct advance was made by the passing of the Local Government Act of 1888 which gives County Councils power to enforce the Rivers Pollu- tion Prevention Act, 1876, and which enables the Local Government Board to issue provisional orders to form joint committees representing interests af- fected, and investing them with the powers of the Rivers Pollution Prevention Act, 1876, to deal with any river or part of it. Under the powers conferred by section 14 of the Act of 1888, the Mersey and Irwell Joint Committee was constituted in 1891, and more recently a similar d 2