414 Report of the Commissioners on the 



a variety of other causes, which we need not here specify, but 

 which will be found on reference to the evidence ; some of these 

 we have inquired into in detail, and have anxiously sought for 

 means by which the nuisances in question might be remedied or 

 abated ; but it is manifest that, if the general quality of the river 

 water be objectionable within the whole of that district whence 

 the supplies for the metropolis are drawn, any remedies for 

 local evils become comparatively unimportant 3 and although 

 these diminish as we ascend the river, we apprehend that their 

 influence, with that of the other contaminating causes, will be 

 more or less felt nearly to the extent to which the tide reaches. 



The statements which have been made respecting the insalubrity 

 of the Thames water, as supplied by the companies, have also been 

 considered by us j and although, from the few cases which have 

 been brought before us of disorders imputed to this cause, we dp 

 not feel ourselves warranted to draw any general conclusions, 

 we think the subject is by no means undeserving of further atten- 

 tion. There must always be considerable difficulty in obtaining 

 decisive evidence of an influence, which, although actually ope- 

 rating to a certain extent as a cause of constitutional derange- 

 ment, may yet not be sufficiently powerful to produce immediate 

 and obvious injury. It cannot be denied that the continued use 

 of a noxious ingredient in diet may create a tendency to disorders, 

 which do not actually break out until fostered by the concurrence 

 of other causes 3 for we unquestionably find an influence of the 

 same kind exerted by other agents, which occasion merely a cer- 

 tain predisposition to disease, and of which the immediate opera- 

 tion must therefore be extremely insidious and difficult to trace. 

 It is obvious that water receiving so large a proportion of foreign 

 matters as we know find their way into the Thames, and so far 

 impure as to destroy fish, cannot, even when clarified by filtra- 

 tion, be pronounced entirely free from the suspicion of general 

 insalubrity. In reference also to this question, we apprehend that 

 there are no grounds for assuming the probability of any improve- 

 ment in the state of the water drawn from the London district of 

 the river. 



Although the principal supply of Avater by the New River Com- 

 pany is not open to the same objectionable impregnations as that 

 of the Thames, we think it, nevertheless,*susceptible of much im- 

 provement. The occasional deficiency in quantity, which sug- 

 gested the necessity of the engine at Broken Wharf, might be 

 obviated by allowing a portion of that supply to be drawn from 

 the River Lea at Lea Bridge. 



But here, as in respect to the Thames, the water is occasionally 

 very muddy, receiving as it does the drainage of a considerable 

 extent of country, in consequence of a right claimed by the pro- 

 prietors of adjacent lands, and which the company have at pre- 

 sent no means of obviating; neither have they any power to pre- 

 sent persons from bathing in their aqueduct. 



