I 



Microbic Life in Sewer Air. 209 



completely innocent of offence, for air went in instead of coming 

 out, though it is quite probable that there was a reverse action 

 occasionally. It was evident to me that the smell then complained 

 of came from some other source than the sewer grating. The 

 examination of the slides that I placed in the gratings showed a 

 variety of organisms such as had been found in the wards of a 

 large hospital, but I could not recognize any that I could accuse 

 of being typhoid or other disease germs, which were the 

 organisms I was mors especially searching for. The arrested 

 organisms were vibrios, micrococci and vegetable germs, inno- 

 cent of malignant action on man, as far as our knowledge 

 extended. I was not at that time aware of the plan of cul- 

 tivation by means of gelatine solutions, such as are now so 

 successfully used in similar investigations. Some of these I 

 exhibited on a former occasion to the members of this society. 

 I exhibited also some specimens and diagrams prepared by 

 Dr. Heron, showing these developments, when I last addressed 

 the society upon the subject of disease germs. 



My last attempt at investigation in this direction was made 

 upon a ventilating opening at the side of my garden upon 

 Duppas Hill Terrace. The results of that investigation have 

 been published in St. Thomas' Hospital Reports for the year 

 1883. They involved a medical question which I was anxious to 

 submit to the medical profession, and did not detail them to this 

 society. The substance of my observations, which were carried 

 on in the winter of 1880-81, was that certain smells came from 

 that ventilator which varied in nature as well as in intensity. 

 Sometimes the smell was excessively offensive from the presence 

 of sulphide of ammonium ; at others there was an ordinary 

 sewer air smell ; and at others a sweet, hay-like odour, which 

 could not be called distinctly offensive. I never smelt that par- 

 ticular smell at that sewer without getting a relaxed throat and a 

 cough in the next day or two ; and on two occasions, a distinct 

 feverish attack lasting for forty-eight hours. There was one 

 point of importance in the microscopical examination of the 

 slides which I suspended in the ventilator — viz., that whenever 

 the sweet, hay-like smell existed, some very minute highly 

 refractive organisms, smaller than the ordinary micrococci, were 

 seen, which were always absent when the sweet hay-like smell 

 was not perceived. I always suffered from relaxed throat after 

 inhaling the sweet hay smell, and I came to the conclusion that 

 the highly refractive particles were the germs which gave me the 

 relaxed throat, and that they were non-existent when putrefaction 

 was thoroughly established. If I had known anything of gela- 

 tine cultivation then, I should certainly have cultivated those 

 germs, and tried to prove their connection with somewhat similar 

 organisms which are found in diphtheria and croupous or infectious 



