502 PROCEEDINGS OP SECTION H. 



the disease becomes located in the houses, and perhaps the soil of the 

 place, redeveloping as weather permits. The spread of typhoid 

 is increased by the arrival of persons from ships, and the larger 

 towns, who, though not suffering from active manifestations of the 

 disease carry the contagion in their persons and clothes, as in towns, 

 there is little hope of the stamping out of typhoid. The English 

 theory of pollution of water from the drainage of cesspits does not 

 apply to these communities ; there are neither cesspits nor wells 

 in Brisbane, yet typhoid is common enough, all our regulations 

 and by-laws are made conformable to the English theories and are 

 more or less wide of the mark. The view that typhoid spreads 

 from evacuations leads to attention to that point, and to the 

 neglect of all other necessities from cleanliness, and typhoid 

 spreads without let or hindrance, as would scarlet fever or measles. 

 Once modify the theories held by British educated medical prac- 

 titioners, and place typhoid in the same list with the other con- 

 tagious fevers, and it will tend to disappear from our communities 

 in the same way that scarlet fever is stamped out by the harmonious 

 working of medical man, nurse, and patient. 



Our water supply for the city of Brisbane is from two large 

 watercourses impounded among the hills. There are no residents 

 on the collecting ground of the watersheds, so contamination 

 at the source is almost out of the question. Rain water collected 

 from roofs in corrugated iron and other foi'ms of iron tanks 

 is relied on when pipe-water is not to be had, and water from 

 excavations in the rock, from cemented tanks below the level of 

 the ground, and fi'om wells, is now rarely used, and when used 

 is generally boiled beforehand and employed in the form of tea, 

 the common drink of the thirsty. The bush traveller, station 

 hand, railway and road labourers, rarely drink water without- 

 this form of preparation, consequently hydatid disease, so common 

 in the southern colonies, is rare in Queensland. One need not 

 urge Australians to drink tea, as it is already consumed to an extent 

 far beyond experience in other countries ; and though the 

 Chinese may not be liked here as settlers, their tea-leaf is a 

 commodity in the present aspect of our civilisation that we cannot 

 dispense with. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that we 

 have no indigenous foliage capable of supplying this want? 

 We have of trees and shrubs thousands, in the genus Eucalyptus 

 alone, the Acacias are equally numerous, and the varieties of 

 foliage are l^eyond estimation. In usages we follow each other 

 like cattle through a scrub-track, but will no one lead us out of this 

 tea-drinking folly ? Tea and cotiee have for their active principle 

 empy reumo-aromatic crystalline bodies — theine and caffeine, which 

 chemists say are identical, but about their creation of these sub- 

 stances by roasting very little seems to be known. The chief sanitary 

 advantage in the use of tea is the ciixumstance that the water has 

 been sterilised by boiling. This operation kills most, if not all,. 



