xNA TURE 



201 



THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 1876 



OUR WATER SUPPLY 



THE last Report of the Commissioners appointed to 

 inquire into the Pollution cf Rivers has excited a 

 considerable amount of public attention, and the press, 

 in addition to giving its own views on the matters 

 reported on, has printed a considerable number of letters 

 from private persons interested in the question. We have, 

 of course, had the usual remarks about the conflicting 

 statements of scientific witnesses, and a large quantity of 

 ingenuity has been expended in attempts to prove that 

 this conflicting evidence is an indication of the witnesses 

 being so wedded to pet theories that they are unab'e or 

 unwilling to see facts in their true light, and hence that 

 the best way is to let matters take their course and trust 

 that everything will come right in the end. To a very 

 large portion of the world this conclusion is a most com- 

 fortable one to arrive at, as it spares the -atepayer and 

 oifers no offence to the dreaded " vested mteresL" On 

 the other hand, there is a considerable section of the 

 public which cannot hear that any part of our institutions 

 is not absolutely perfect without being thrown into a 

 state of nervousness and dread, a section well exemplified 

 on the occasion of a former report by a paper which stated 

 that — " We must face the dreadful fact that no amount of 

 filtration can free our water from the nitrates and nitrites 

 •which are amongst the most deadly of poisons ! " 



No person of ordinary common sense can fail to per- 

 ceive the folly of the alarmist school, but to the non- 

 scientific public the fallacies of those whose cry is stare 

 super vias aniiquas are much more difficult to detect. 

 Unfortunately the education through which most of the 

 present generation have gone is not one which can enable 

 them to arrive at any correct judgment as to the value of 

 statements made by one scientific witness as compared 

 with those made by another ; the natural result cf their 

 education is in fact to cause them to attach a great value 

 to the statements of a man who has a reputation for what 

 is known as " popular science," and to regard the real 

 worker or knower as an amiable enthusiast or eccentric 

 theorist who is so carried away by his fancies that he is 

 quite incompetent to pronounce upon practical matters. 

 The same habit of mind induces them to value the state- 

 ments of those whom they are pleased to call " practical 

 men," who are generally men having an empiric or im- 

 fl perfect knowledge of certain processes. The result of 

 this is that the opinion of one who has a mere smattering of 

 chemistry, and therefore considers himself qualified to 

 speak on all chemical questions, is pitted against that 

 of one who has devoted his life to chemical and phy- 

 sical science, and the puzzled outsider sits down ex- 

 claiming, "Who is to decide when doctors disagree?" 

 Again, this state of things is pretty well known to the 

 people who are put on their trial by the allegations of those 

 appointed to inquire into sanitary afifairS; and they know 

 well enough where to lay their hands on those who will 

 make the best of a case entrusted to them ; and we cannot 

 help thinking that if it were possible to tabulate the 

 names of the scientific witnesses called during the last 

 fen years on the side of sanitary reform or on the side 

 Vol. XIII.— No. 324 



of those who considered their interests endangered by it, 

 some curious facts would be brought to light. 



A letter from Sir Edmund Beckett, in the Times of 

 January lotb, illustrates the state of the case remarkably 

 well. The writer, speaking of letters by Mr. Denton 

 and Lord Camperdown, says that if they had heard as 

 much scientific evidence about water purity as he had, one 

 would have been less puzzled and the other less alarmed ; 

 and he then goes on to say that — " They would then have 

 known that the late Report is only what every person of 

 experience in hearing such evidence could have predicted 

 with certainty from the constitution of this commission." 

 We may add to this, that any thoroughly competent com- 

 mission of chemists working with a trustworthy process, 

 could not have arrived at conclusions greatly different 

 from those arrived at by the reporters. The writer then 

 proceeds to say : — 



" I have heard eminent scientific men assert on their 

 oaths — and they always add that these things are ' not 

 opinions, but facts ' — that the water of a moderate-sized 

 river receiving the unpurified sewage of half a million 

 people was perfectly good, potable water for a town not 

 many miles below the sewage-supplying places. That is 

 a specimen of what we may call the impurist philosopher's 

 view of water. 



" On the other hand, there is a school which maintains, 

 with equal positiveness, the theory that no length of run 

 (within such distances as we are practically concerned 

 with) purifies sewage by oxidation, but that a particle of 

 sewage, or whatever other learned name they call it, sent 

 into the Thames at Oxford arrives as a particle of sew- 

 age at Hampton, and may poison a man in. London. 

 It is true that they do not quite like the proposition 

 reduced to those very bare terms, but they cannot deny, 

 when they are pressed by a little cross-examination, that 

 it is the logical consequence of their theory." 



We very much regret that the names of the " eminent 

 scientific men " who make the first assertion have not 

 been given, as we should then have some means of ascer- 

 taining the value' to be attached to their assertions. With 

 regard to the latter statement we think that the writer to 

 a great extent entirely misses the point. Very few 

 scientific witnesses wiU maintain that Oxford sewage 

 at prese/ii Tea.ches Hampton as sewage ; the question is, 

 How long will the present state of affairs remain ? With 

 our rapidly-increasing population the volume of sewage 

 yearly poured into a river at any one point must increase, 

 as do the n umber of points at which sewage is poured in ; 

 and the questions really asked of the public are — How long 

 do you suppose that this can go on before the river-bed 

 is coated with sewer mud and becomes, as hundreds of 

 streams which a few years back were clear and bright 

 have become, an open sewer ? And is it not better to 

 take such measures as shall prevent such a state of things 

 from coming about than to wait until the pollution be- 

 comes unbearable ? 



The writers of the report in question are perfectly well able 

 to fight their own battles, so that we do not think it neces- 

 sary- to enter into any elaborate defence of their suggestions, 

 but we must protest against their being treated as vision- 

 aries, and their statements being judged as of no more 

 value than those of the " eminent scientific men " who say 

 that a moderate-sized river can receive the sewage of half 

 a million of people and yet be a " perfectly good, potable 

 water not many miles below the sewage-supplying places." 



M 



