Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/55

Rh in this country and in Europe, to economically furnish water in ample quantity, a corresponding degree of skill and enterprise has not always been directed to the determination of its quality.

It is not impossible to point out authorities on sanitary matters so wedded to pet theories that they unhesitatingly deny that the conversion of a pure running stream, or even a large river, into a conduit for the sewage-filth of a great city, will have any deleterious effect on the potable quality of the water taken a few miles below the filth-entering point. It has been demonstrated that this is not only false in theory but also in fact. It was Dr. Letheby, of the English "Royal Commission on the Water-Supply of London," it is believed, who was the first to announce what has since been proved a fallacy, viz., that "if sewage be mixed with twenty times its volume of river-water, the organic matter which it contains will be oxidized and completely disappear while the river is flowing a dozen miles or so;" and further, that "it is safe to drink sewage-contaminated water after filtration." The "Royal Rivers Pollution Commission" of 1868, unwilling that this expression of opinion should remain untested, submitted it to careful and ingenious experimental investigation. The result is thus announced:. . . "It is thus evident that so far from sewage mixed with twenty times its volume of water being oxidized during a flow of ten or twelve miles, scarcely two-thirds of it would be so destroyed in a flow of one hundred and sixty-eight miles, at the rate of one mile per hour, or after the lapse of a week." And, after mentioning certain details in support of this, the commissioners conclude with the remark that "it will be safe to infer, however, from the above results, that there is no river in the United Kingdom long enough to effect the destruction of sewage by oxidation." Dr. Frankland, an eminent English authority, before the Royal Commission on Water-Supply, gives some strong testimony in support of the statement that it is impossible to remove the sewage contamination from water by any known process, natural or artificial, so as to render it harmless, except by boiling for a long time, or by distillation; and, as these two processes are impracticable on a large scale, then, he says, in his opinion, "water that has once been contaminated by sewage ought not afterward to be used for domestic purposes; and, inasmuch as it is generally believed that the noxious matter of sewage exists there in the form of minute germs, which are probably smaller than blood-globules, I do not believe that even filtration through a stratum of chalk could be relied upon to free the water perfectly from such germs." According to the same authority, "the noxious part in sewage is that which is held in mechanical suspension, not held in solution;" and yet, he says, and truly, "no system of filtration will secure its removal." Colonel J. W. Adams, C. E., in a valuable paper on river-pollution, follows up this subject to its logical