No. XXX VI. A.] APPENDIX. 391 



fluid sent out by them should be traced to its origin, that scientific men 

 may know how the typhoid poison infected the milk, as much damage has 

 ensued to the company by the defiant tone assumed by one of its directors, 

 who was a great promoter of sewage farms, and who might have shown 

 becoming humility when so great a disaster occurred in a company imme- 

 diately under his control. 

 September 8. 



Now that public attention is directed to the sewage-grounds, advantage 

 must be taken of the opportunity to remedy their evils. The difficulty in 

 a proper application of sewage is the amount of water with which it is 

 mixed. From Croydon a river of sewage runs, which at its origin turns a 

 turbine wheel to work a Latham's machine for the separation of stones, 

 bottles, and other solid matters. The first attempt to utilize sewage in the 

 metropolis was made many years ago at Fulham, where a pumping engine 

 was erected. The company was most anxious to supply experimentally the 

 important market garden belonging to Messrs. Fitch, and I was empowered, 

 for the sake of experience, to offer sewage free of charge, and the company 

 even undertook to lay pipes over their garden. A serious conference took 

 place between the landowner, the three partners, and myself, of some hours' 

 duration, when they pointed out the immense importance for healthy vege- 

 tation that the water should be got from the grounds ; and, after a most 

 earnest and careful discussion, they declined the offer. Thirty years' 

 experience has added but little to the valuable knowledge of these first- 

 class cultivators. Our first object should be to relieve our towns of that 

 which is detrimental to health ; the second, to use the material profitably, 

 if we can ; but health must not be sacrificed for gain, nor disease incurred 

 for the prevention of loss. The serious nature of this particular case is 

 that the evils of sewage occur at one spot, and the distribution of the 

 poison takes place at another, far distant ; so the connection between the 

 source of the evil and the resultant mischief is difficult and in many cases 

 impossible to be traced. It is now of paramount importance to the 

 multitude that sewage shall be under stringent enactments and searching 

 Government supervision ; and, on now leaving the controversy, everybody 

 must admit the time has been well spent if it leads to a supply of good 

 milk to the people, and a better mode of rendering sewage innocuous to 

 our cities. 



In reference to your able article of last Saturday, may I be permitted 

 to observe that my remarks have been misunderstood by a few persons 

 and mis-stated by others ? 



I have assumed as a generally-accepted fact that typhoid fever is 

 intimately associated with putrescible matter, although the exact nature of 

 the poison, as you so powerfully put it, is unknown. Upon this assumption 

 I pointed out that if a cow ate sewage, or drank sewage, or ate sewage 

 vegetable produce, that the milk became putrescible, and, according to all 

 analogous experience, a competent vehicle for typhoid poison. 



I have never passed an opinion as to how the poison actually got into 

 the milk during the late epidemic. Whether it was directly added by 

 polluted water, as many eminent authorities are inclinecl to believe; 

 whether it was absorbed on the farm of the Dairy Reform Company, as 



