THE MICROBES OF WATER 301 



Protozoa contained in ordinary potable waters. Due 

 to the author's investigations, Mr. E. Meade Bache l 

 proposes to sterilise city waters by the agency of 

 electricity. He says that ' after reading the results 

 of Dr. Griffiths I gladly reverted to the intention 

 with which I had set out in my experiments of being 

 able to suggest means by which water supplied to 

 cities could be sterilised for drinking purposes. 

 The means at our command seem to me ample. It 

 is true that we cannot electrolise successfully a large 

 reservoir of water, for in that the electricity would 

 be too diffused to be effective. It is true that, in 

 pipes from which water is flowing into or out of the 

 reservoir, its germs would not be subjected to attack 

 for more than a second. It is true that the resist- 

 ance that we should have to overcome in water 

 would be large. But the electro-motive force 

 (E.M.F.) of a few thousand volts (there are dynamos 

 that generate ten thousand), thrown athwart a pipe 

 of proper dimensions, would probably paralyse every 

 bacterium in its path. ... If, upon issuing from as 

 well as upon entering a reservoir, the water were 

 attacked in pipes from poles all but encircling them, 

 with an electro-motive force of a few thousand volts, 

 all germs must reach the denizens of cities supplied 

 from such a source wholly innocuous, because they 

 would be dead.' 



Whether electricity is applicable or not for the 

 sterilisation of water on a large scale, there is no 



1 Proceedings of American Philosophical Society, vol. xxix. 

 1891), pp. 26-39. 



