2 84 THE MICROSCOPICAL NEWS. 
liquid drawn from service pipes or cisterns. The atmosphere 
being now more calm, and the cholera scare over, at least for this 
year, the subject can be considered more deliberately than on the 
eve of a panic, when reason for the most part disappears, and hasty 
modes of action become the orders of the day. 
The germ theory of zymotic diseases indicates that these diseases 
are propagated by means of living spores which increase and 
multiply upon finding a suitable nidus, and it has by many been 
considered proven that cholera and typhoid excretions entering a 
source from which drinking water is drawn will induce these specific 
diseases in persons drinking such contaminated water. 
Other diseases may possibly be of similar origin to those we have 
indicated above, but as it is not our intention to discuss the 
question from any other but a general standpoint, we must be 
contented with pointing out some of the peculiarities of many of 
the statements generally placed before readers of these subjects. 
Chemical analysis is fer se an operation entirely inadequate to 
give a trustworthy indication of the quality of a water for drinking 
purposes: it may be able to give the relative quantities of some of 
those substances found also in human ejectamenta, but it is unable 
to decide positively that the said substances have had this origin. 
It must also be said that chemists, as a body, are not agreed upon 
what is the best system of chemical analysis, and even when results 
have been obtained by any one of them, it is by no means certain 
that the interpretations given are correct. 
A notable instance of this may be found in the Journal of the 
Society of Chemical Industry. In a paper read by Mr. J. Carter 
Bell before the Manchester Section, he stated that “a gentleman 
connected with one of the large orphan asylums near London 
showed me five different analyses of the same water received from 
five independent analytical chemists. The analyses and the 
decisions arising from them were so different that the directors 
knew not what to do. The facts of the case are these: The 
governors of the institution had sunk a well between three and four 
hundred feet deep. When finished the water was analysed, and 
chemist A said it was very good. After a little time it was 
analysed by a firm of analytical chemists, who condemned the 
water, saying that it was surface water, and that it was not suitable 
for drinking, as at certain seasons of the year, owing to the fields 
being dressed with manure, it would become far more impure. 
They strongly advised the directors to obtain their drinking water 
from another source. This report of B was not pleasant for the 
directors to receive, and, having several hundred children to care 
for, they were bound to pursue the matter further. They then 
called in chemist C. He said that the water contained so much 
organic matter that it was perfectly unfit for drinking. The 
