Page:On the Pollution of the Rivers of the Kingdom.djvu/16

 stage of contamination has been utterly unfit for drinking. The last mentioned evil deserves very particular attention, for the danger to health occasioned by the consumption of polluted water, is, in our opinion, infinitely greater than any danger which the effluvia of polluted water can occasion. Water, tainted but very slightly with sewage, may determine terrible outbreaks of disease among the populations which drink of it; and, although in such cases as that of Manchester (where the water is grossly and offensively foul), there is little chance that people will drink that water, yet in cases of less obvious contamination, tainted water is, perhaps, extensively drunk. Such water, supplied by Water Companies, has, in various cases, been suspected, or proved to have determined, on a very large scale, the distribution of cholera deaths during times of epidemic visitation; as in our South London districts, during the two last epidemics of cholera; at other times it has, probably, exerted equal influence, in determining the distribution of deaths from ordinary diarrhœal diseases; and on various occasions it has been shown, that what to the common eye is an inappreciable pollution of water by sewage, may yet imply very serious dangers of infection for the persons who consume such water. On these grounds, seeing that brooks and rivers are almost universally the sources from which Water Companies derive their supplies for large urban populations, we deem it to be of essential importance to the public health, that the running waters of the country should be strictly protected from pollution." Among other conclusions they arrived at, the Commissioners, at page 39, submitted the following:—

That this condition of rivers is a public and national