1884.] CIVILIZATION AND ITS WASTES. 273 



Many people drank that water in preference to the water 

 supplied by the water companies, which came from the 

 Thames, which everybody knew to be foul. Now, what 

 relation had that to the cholera ? It was made a subject of 

 lengthy investigation, the reports of which may be found in 

 the reports made by the medical officer to the Privy Council 

 in one of the English Blue Books. They found that the 

 earliest cholera patient in that vicinity had lodged in a house 

 very near this well ; that he had died there ; that during his 

 sickness, the ejections had been thrown into the privy vault ; 

 they found that that was a leaky vault ; and that all the 

 materials had leaked through into the well; they found the 

 track along which the filth had run to the well, and they 

 found that immediately after this occurred, that which 

 sanitarians call " an explosion " took place, which killed, as 

 I have said, over five liundred people in two weeks. They 

 found that in one case an old lady, living four or five miles 

 away in the city, died of cholera. They could not find out 

 that there was any such infection in her case, but it turned 

 out that the old lady had formerly lived in the vicinity of this 

 Broad street pump ; she thought the water was the purest in 

 the city, and she was in the habit of sending her man with a 

 large jug over there to get the water from that well. She 

 was the only person who died of cholera in the neighborhood 

 where she lived. I only cite that to show that we may have 

 water of apparently exceptional purity, which we know 

 contains sewage. Every experiment that has been made of 

 late years shows that waters do not purify themselves except 

 in a very long time. They must run a long ways and be a 

 long time exposed to the air, before they will be purified ; 

 they do purify themselves in the end. 



Mr. Webb. This is a question of which I have been think- 

 ing a good deal, and for a good many years. That the 

 emigrants polluted the springs which they passed on their 

 journeys, I cannot believe. I have crossed the plains eighteen 

 times and never had a chill. I have traveled with large 

 crowds and small. In 1849 I was on the frontier where 



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