Recent Progress in Sanitary Science. 285 



law, individuals or bodies corporate to use it, but this privilege confers 

 on no one the right to contaminate the water, whenever the general good 

 is interfered with. 



This great truth appears self-evident, but it has nevertheless in many 

 cases been lost sight of, for which reason it is the more important that 

 this representative body should authoritatively declare it. The whole 

 course of legislation among civilized nations, as they grow into a higher 

 appreciation of the obligations of the governing body to the governed, 

 sustains the justice of this declaration. Five centuries ago, Englaud, 

 among modern nations, took the first step, by imposing a fine upon 

 persons casting filth into ditches and streams. From this time onward, 

 and more especially during the past thirty years, since most people of 

 intelligence have become acquainted with the magnitude of the evils in- 

 volved in the pollution of rivers, Parliament has passed a long series of 

 Acts, to repress or put an end to these evils. Connected with these Acts, 

 were many costly investigations conducted by Royal Commissions, the 

 literature of which constitutes the material forming most recent books on 

 sanitary science, and the most valuable part of numerous town and state 

 Health reports. To present here the admirable code of sanitary legisla- 

 tion, built up by the wisdom of five centuries, is foreign to our object; — 

 it will be sufficient, when the proper time has come, to embody its best 

 features in our own state health-laws. 



In France, strenuous endeavors have been made during the past two 

 centuries to protect the purity of streams by repressive legislation. 

 These have been in part successful, a result due in some cases to the 

 discovery by manufacturers — when they had been enjoiued from casting 

 in refuse, and had thus been compelled to experiment in order to find 

 out how to dispose of it — that their refuse might be actually a source of 

 profit. 



VI. It is necessary to arrive at a decision upon the much-mooted point 

 whether a stream after pollution, can by flowing for a limited number 

 of miles, in contact with air and growing plants, be again made a safe 

 drinking water. 



We are all aware of the great extent to which this vexed question has 

 been agitated in England, and how large an amount of contradictory 

 testimony was collected by the Royal Commissioners on River-Pollution. 

 On the one hand, the assertion was made that running streams purified 

 themselves completely iu the course of a few miles; on the other, that 

 no such power of complete self-purification existed. It is probable that 

 the truth lies somewhere between these extremes. Our reasons for this 

 belief are drawn partly from the results of chemical analyses, and partly 

 from experience. 



Many of those present have seen the sewage of Paterson emptying into 

 the Passaic, and a short time afterwards have partaken of these polluted 

 waters, as delivered from the hydrants of Newark, Jersey City, and Ho- 

 boken, with impunity. Still more, they have done so for years, and no 

 physician has shown that a case of active disease was attributable to 



