390 APPENDIX. [No. XXXVI.A. 



the products of fever cases. In the former case, however, it is applied long 

 before the grass is eaten by the cow. A field where cows continually 

 pasture yields grass which produces milk of bad quality. 



It is satisfactory to find that the sewage milk typhoid controversy has 

 thoroughly aroused the country to the importance of the subject, and it is 

 likely thoroughly to discomfort those who have of late years inflicted so 

 much damage to sanitary science by their absence of knowledge and want 

 of skill. 



September 3. 



My observations upon the milk question have in some cases been 

 misunderstood, in others they have been mis-stated ; but the broad fact 

 that recent sewage on grass affects milk is recognized and being acted 

 upon throughout England, as all prudent persons now discard milk which 

 has any proximity to sewage. I took the most active part in turning the 

 sewage out of rivers. I prepared the evidence upon which the sewage was 

 turned out of the river Wandle, as it runs through my experimental 

 garden, by procuring a series of perpetual injunctions in Chancery, when 

 it was diverted from the land ; and now the sewage farms are so mis- 

 managed that I have again to take active steps to remedy this evil, which 

 is as bad or worse than when it was turned into the river. I earnestly 

 warned the Government in the former instance to avert the danger which 

 threatened the inhabitants from their drinking the polluted Wandle water, 

 when persons were sent round to inform the residents ; and I now publicly, 

 most earnestly warn the Government as to the mode in which these sewage 

 farms are conducted. In the former instance the same universal denial 

 of facts, the same attempt at ridicule, the same personal invectives, the 

 same false arguments, were used by those who had an interest in the river 

 pollution as have been attempted to be used on the present occasion by 

 those who have an interest in the pollution of the land. By patience and 

 perseverance I carried my point. I turned the sewage from the river 

 which runs through my garden, and the proceedings served as a precedent 

 for preventing the pollution of all the other rivers in England. By 

 similar patience and perseverance I trust on the present occasion to 

 compel those who are reckless of the comfort, the health, and the lives of 

 residents near sewage-grounds, to compel them to adopt such a system as 

 may not be a nuisance to their neighbours. Town councillors have to 

 learn this one great fact that sewage taken from their own parish and 

 distributed to their neighbours is no more a sanitary mode of dealing with 

 the question than if a housemaid of one house throws all the offal over the 

 wall into her neighbour's premises ; yet so does Croydon to Beddington, 

 and Enfield to Edmonton. It is not only typhoid fever which is propa- 

 gated by sewage-grounds, scarlet fever seems to be distributed wholesale 

 by it ; and what can be expected when highly contagious epithelial cells 

 are sown broadcast over the land ? We have not had a great epidemic of 

 cholera since sewage farms have been at work, but I look with fear and 

 trembling on what the consequences may be if sewage irrigation is not 

 improved before the next visitation, which now threatens. I hope, what- 

 ever mistakes may have been committed, that the Dairy Reform Company 

 will ensure the future confidence of the public by giving the most minute 

 particulars to those qualified to judge of the matter, that every drop of 



