BY J. BANCROFT, ESQ., M.D. 15 
“And be it further enacted that no slaughter house, or place 
for slaughtering cattle, shall be licensed in any town unless with- 
in sixty feet of an accessible creek or river,” if the same exist in 
the neighbourhood. See Statutes of the Colony of Queensland, 
Vol. I, Page 854, Clause XIV. This act ensures the pollution 
of every running water near a Queensland town. 
We see tanneries and felmongeries pouring their filthy water 
direct into what were some years ago most lovely streams. 
Truly the so-called civilised man is little better, and in this 
respect is far worse than the aboriginal savage. 
Children in England rarely drink water from brooks and 
pools, preferring to go to the first pamp. Such habit inculcated 
in this country would be salutary. 
Pure water at dairies should be insisted on, and careful 
inspection as to cleanliness. Typhoid fever has often been traced 
to this source. That itis very contagious there can be no doubt. 
Just recently the celebrated surgeon, Dr. Fortescue, of Sydney, 
was carried off at the early age of 45 by this disease. We 
have much to learn as to the nature of the contagion of 
typhoid. Over-exertion, whether mental or physical, by reducing 
the powers of the individual renders him prone to take the 
disease from slighter infection than would otherwise happen. 
New comers of limited means worry and work themselves into 
a state of feverish debility, often the beginning of typhoid. Some 
method of flushing the more extensive drains of the city 
should be contrived. Tanks (with a large escape plug) that 
would fill by a ball and tap might be suddenly emptied at 
the upper end of such drains; and if done late in the day, 
some of the bad smells in the lower parts of the city 
might be diminished, and their bad effects minimised. 
As to our present water supply, this could be relieved 
of much of its mud and impurities before being furnished 
to the inhabitants if proper reservoirs, where these matters 
could subside, were made on the hills in the immediate 
