Bache.] ^0 [April 17, 



pathogenic germs. In that, of course, is involved the other 

 open question, whether or not ordinary drinking-water is the 

 source of disease. I have properly spoken of the questions as 

 open ones, because so many persons are enlisted on opposite 

 sides that I cannot venture without arrogance to decide them 

 authoritatively. The tenor of the preceding remarks, however, 

 must indicate that, personally, I believe drinking-water supply 

 to be ordinarily one of the largest factors in the causation of 

 some zymotic diseases ; but lest I may have left it in doubt that 

 I hold that view, I here state it explicitly. I have, I confidently 

 believe, pointed out one way in which the evil may be abated, 

 and perhaps neutralized ; and this without disparagement of the 

 efficiency of subsidence basins in their adverse influence upon 

 bacterial dissemination. As to this (with the exception of treat- 

 ment with iron) the last remaining factor in the production of 

 pure drinking-water, I shall be glad to take a more opportune 

 time than the present occasion, when I have so long engaged the 

 attention of the Society, to prove directly, from niy still later 

 experiments and observations, what seems directly proved by 

 the statistics of prevalence of typhoid fever in Philadelphia 

 and elsewhere with reference to areas of different water-supply, 

 that subsidence basins are also an important factor in the health 

 of a city, not only relieving water of impurities in it, represented 

 by alluvial and effete matter in suspension, but also relieving it 

 in a measure of the impurity due to simultaneous deposition of 

 the bacterial bearers of poison to our homes. 



As to our ability to destroy the bacillus tuberculosis in the 

 human body, by means of percutaneous administration of the 

 electric current, I hope that I may be allowed to say a final 

 word. I cannot see, as I have already remarked, wiry, if it can 

 be killed in a bottle with a mere fraction of two volts (as I have 

 shown by the experiments of Dr. Griffiths that it must have 

 been killed), it cannot be killed in the patient suffering from 

 tuberculosis, by the enormously greater electro-motive force 

 that the body is capable of receiving without detriment in a con- 

 centrated form. This statement, however, is not intended to 

 imply that the current would be capable of curing a case of tuber- 

 culosis which had involved caseous degeneration of the pa its. 

 If it did, it would also imply that to my mind electricity is 

 creative. Electricity, however, although not creative, includes 



