434 



Profs. Percy Frankland and Marshall Ward. 



although there is some evidence that on the last day 

 of their detection the typhoid bacilli were present, 

 either in larger numbers or in a more active state in 

 the water maintained at the winter than in that at 

 the summer temperature. 



(4.) The same unsterilised Thames water infected with the 

 B. coli communis on the same day, and kept under pre- 

 cisely similar'conditions of temperature, &c., was still 

 found to contain living coli bacilli forty days after 

 their introduction. These bacilli doubtless' persisted 

 in the living state, even for a much longer period of 

 time than this, no later examinations being made; 

 and on the occasion of their last detection they did 

 not appear to have lost any of their original vitality, 

 as they still promptly reacted with the phenol broth 

 test. 



Experiments on the Influence of the Addition of Salt to the JJnst&riliseA 

 Typhoid-infected Thames Water. 



In the recent cholera epidemic at Hamburg, it is now almost 

 universally recognised that the most important agent in distributing 

 the zymotic poison was the highly polluted and nnfiltered water of 

 the River Elbe. This water, moreover, during the epidemic was 

 found to be unusually rich in salt, in fact at times it was distinctly 

 brackish in character. Thus a sample of Hamburg water sent to me 

 by Mr. Ernest Hart in October, 1892, and which I submitted to 

 analysis, had the following composition : 



Sample of Hamburg Water received from Mr. Ernest Hart. 

 Results of Analysis expressed in Parts per 100,000. 



Oxygen consumed by organic matter, as measured by reduction of a solution of permanganate 

 acting for three hours in the cold = 0-366. 



The water was very turbid, depositing a quantity of brown suspended matter. 



The high percentage of salt is due to the waste liquors which are 

 discharged from the Stassfurth salt works and other factories into 

 the Elbe and its tributaries. Now it has been more recently shown 

 (Trenkmann, " Beitrag zur Biologie des Kommabacillus," ' Centralbl 



