Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 24, 1870 (IA b22307643).pdf/46

 the purification of the Thames, and such partial filtration of our drinking water as the public waterworks-companies cannot avoid.

We have lately been rather blamed for not gratefully and more fully accepting the germ theory of disease; but to this College. the theory is not new, and, I think I may add, has not been proved to be true to the extent its more zealous supporters believe. It will be in the remembrance of many present that in the year 1849 a theory was put forth that epidemic cholera was due to fungi and their germs. Peculiar bodies, it was said, had been found in the rice-water evacuations, and also in the air and drinking waters of the infected localities.

It was confidently asserted that we had substantial facts in support of the theory, and that it fulfilled the conditions required of being both true and sufficient. This College thought the subject of such moment that a sub-committee was formed from the Cholera Committee of that day for its inves- tigation. The drinking water of infected