BACTERIOLOGY AND WATER 107 



London sewage and its treatment, carried out by 

 Professor Frank Clowes, Chief Chemist to the 

 London County Council, an instance was recently 

 met with in which a guinea-pig, inoculated with a 

 portion of coke-deposit derived from a bacterial 

 sewage bed, died from typical tuberculosis, and 

 sections of its organs showed the presence of 

 numerous tubercle bacilli. Dr. Musehold has now 

 submitted the whole question of the vitality of 

 virulent tubercle bacilli present in the expectora- 

 tions of consumptive persons in sewage, in river 

 water, and on cultivated land respectively, to an 

 exhaustive examination, and the novelty as well 

 as importance of these researches merit their being 

 carefully considered. 



In the first instance tuberculous sputum was 

 introduced into river water in its natural condi- 

 tion, and as this water was abstracted from the 

 River Spree, in Berlin, it was exposed at any rate 

 to a certain degree of surface contamination. In 

 this water, kept in ordinary daylight, the tubercle 

 bacilli remained alive and in a virulent condition 

 for over five months ; in ordinary sewage for six 

 and a half months. Some of the sewage-infected 

 samples were left in the open air and exposed to 

 ordinary meteorological conditions, but even the 

 ordeal of getting frozen up in their surround- 

 ings did not in the slightest shorten the lease of 



