PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION H. 669 
with such a constant high pressure in the pipes it is not easy to 
believe that this mode of contamination can go on to a large 
extent or that it can account for the regular recurrence and 
equally regular rise and decline of our annual outbreaks. There 
has been much controversy lately about the liability to contami- 
nation of the water in street mains from the fire-plug openings. 
About the possibility of this there need be no question, and about 
the grossness of the sanitary fault of placing fire-plugs in or close 
to street channels there can be no dispute. But that the great 
prevalence of typhoid in Melbourne is to be explained in this way 
is to me inconceivable. If there is any part of the metropolis in 
which fire-plugs abound, and one constantly used for street- 
watering purposes, it is the city proper. And yet, as I have 
repeatedly pointed out in my official reports, the mortality from 
typhoid in the city, year after year, is greatly below the average of 
the whole metropolis. Im my report for the half-year ending 
30th June, 1889, I was able to state that there had been no 
undue prevalence of the disease in the particular district (East 
Melbourne) whose water supply was specially declared to be con- 
taminated. If, independently of introduction by the fire-plugs, 
we are to assume the probability of contamination of the water 
by entrance of infecting matter through the joints of pipes from 
the soil, equal difficulties have to be faced. The disease is so 
universally distributed over city and suburbs that it would be 
necessary to assume an almost continuous suction into the pipes 
going on in many places all over the metropolis. But this would 
imply an equally extensive system of leakage from the pipes while 
under ordinary pressure, and of that there is no evidence. Of 
course, we have had the statement made that typhoid bacilli have 
been found in the Yan Yean water, as it is drawn from the tap, 
just as the same bacilli have been reported as existing in drinking- 
water in various places in Europe. From equally competent 
authority we have had the statement, however, that careful and 
repeated investigation failed to discover them in water taken 
from various places, both at the sources and in the city (vide 
Final Report of the Sanitary Commission). 
About the possible detection of typhoid bacilli in drinking- 
water there need be no dispute; but about the probability of 
their occurrence and detection in such water as that of Melbourne 
much may be said. It has been stated by Dr. H. Kowalsky, of 
Vienna, that among more than 2000 specimens of water which he 
had examined, these bacilli were found only in three, taken 
respectively from a well, from a cistern, and from the Danube 
water in Vienna. (Schmidt’s Jahrbiicher, No. 8—1889, from Wien 
Klin. Wehnschr., I. 10-16, 1888.) Without disputing the 
occurrence of outbreaks of typhoid due to the use of contaminated 
water, I have nevertheless to repeat the opinion that the proba- 
bilities against this mode of accounting for the prevalence of the 
