Bache.] [April 17, 



38 C. (100.4 Fah.) ; and in the second series, similarly treated, 

 no growths appeared after an incubation of twenty days, with 

 the thermometer at 35 C. (95 Fah.). As before incidentally men- 

 tioned, all of these experiments were made with wire looped in 

 glass bottles. Consequently all the electricity that attacked the 

 microbes away from the wires was the residuum which the wires 

 did not conduct, necessarily by far the lesser portion ; and as the 

 minimum of force was not sought or obtained, what is needed 

 may be a mere fraction of the time and force actually employed. 

 With so small a current as that used, and with the considerable 

 volume of the respective liquids employed which latter point 

 the wood-cut shows detriment to the organisms from products 

 of electrolysis may be deemed inappreciable. 



It has therefore been demonstrated that certain schizomycetes 

 can be killed in a short time by a low current. Presumably all 

 others can be killed in an equally short time by an equally low 

 current ; which was the assumption with which I had set out at 

 the beginning of my own experiments, looking primarily to 

 destroying pathogenic germs in the human body, and secondarily, 

 to rendering them innocuous through the sterilization of water 

 for drinking purposes. I therefore ask myself why, if a very low 

 current, passing for a few minutes, can destroy bacteria in a bottle, 

 should not a much higher one, administered repeatedly for the 

 same time, be sure to destroy them in the human body? Daily, 

 in the course of electro-therapeutic treatment, ten, twenty, 

 twenty-five, and many more volts are administered to patients, 

 avoiding only strong or continuous application of the current to 

 the pneumogastric nerve, on account of the inhibitory action of 

 the heart thereby provoked. But I will not pause just at this 

 moment to speak more fully to this point, but will here confine 

 myself to the main subject of this paper, clearly set forth by its 

 title and the tenor of the preceding remarks. Reverting to the 

 question of the sterilization of water for the use of cities, and 

 with the new light upon the subject, which, as it appears, I might 

 have gained for myself, but for having been diverted from my 

 course by a false inference, I am constrained to ask my hearers, 

 as I have asked myself in this case also, why the attempt should 

 not be made to destroy bacteria wholesale in the drinking water 

 of large cities by the method previously foreshadowed. 



The means at our command seem to me ample. It is true that 



