432 



NA TURE 



[August 31, 1905 



sources which seem to be polluted can thus be largely 

 excluded, and by jedicious arrangement of the latrines 

 and by posting guards to prevent individual pollution 

 and the drinking of suspicious supplies much may be 

 done to ensure pure water for drinking. As regards 

 artesian wells, surface wells and streams are the main 

 source of danger, but by driving deep artesian wells 

 a pure water is obtained. This, however, would be 

 possible only under special conditions in certain dis- 

 tricts and for comparatively small contingents. 



There remains the method of sterilisation, which, if 

 it could be universally applied, would necessarily pre- 

 vent water-borne disease. 



The three methods applicable for the sterilisation 

 of water are : — (i) filtration through a porous porcelain 

 filter such as the Pasteur-Chamberland ; (2) heat ; and 

 (3) chemical germicides. 



Filtration through a porcelain filter, if it can be 

 applied, would be efficient, but it necessitates a good 

 deal of apparatus, and the filter candles are fragile. 

 It is a good method under efficient supervision, but 

 is more applicable for small contingents than a large 

 army. 



Heat has been adopted by many inventors, and Mr. 

 Arnold- Forster, M.P., recently inspected a number 

 of devices based on this principle. In most, e.g. the 

 Lawrence, Forbes, Mallock, and Tuckfield and Gar- 

 land machines, the water is heated to the boiling 

 point, but in the Griffiths machine it is assumed (from 

 experimental evidence) that heating to about 170° F. 

 suffices, which results in a considerable economy in 

 fuel. In all the machines the out-going hot water 

 warms the in-going cold water, and is itself cooled 

 thereby. Important considerations are weight and 

 fuel, and these have received much attention from the 

 respective inventors. 



The Mallock machine, which, including pump and 

 cases, weighed 153 lb., with a consumption of one 

 pint of kerosine gave 50 gallons of water an hour at 

 a temperature of 88° or 90°, the temperature of the in- 

 going water being 74°, The Tuckfield and Garland 

 machine, of which the steriliser weighed 198 lb. and 

 the heating apparatus 126J lb., gave 40 to 50 gallons 

 at a temperature of between 104° and 110°, the tem- 

 perature of the in-going water being 78° ; its in- 

 ventors state that it requires 20 lb. or 30 lb. of 

 kerosine for 1000 gallons of water, and in it the water 

 to be sterilised is heated by steam generated in a 

 separate boiler. The Griffiths machine, weighing 

 120 lb. and using \\ pint of kerosine an hour, 

 yielded 265 gallons of water an hour at a temperature 

 of 92°, 45 gallons an hour at a temperature of 103° 

 to 106°, and 72 gallons an hour at a temperature of 

 105°, the temperature of the supply being in all cases 

 67°. The Lawrence apparatus, weighing, with water- 

 tank and case, 168 lb., and working with supply 

 water at 74°, had a temperature of delivery of 88° to 

 00°, but it used two pints of kerosine an hour and 

 the quantitv of water delivered was only 30 gallons 

 an hour. Finally, the Forbes machine, weighing 

 130 lb., delivered 15 gallons of water an hour, with an 

 oil consumption of one pint, the temperature of 

 supply being 74°, and of delivery from 86° to 90°. 



Lastly, there remain the chemical germicides. 

 Obviously these must have no deleterious action on 

 man in the quantities employed; they should not be 

 corrosive to metal vessels, they should be portable and 

 act rapidly. Alum has long been employed for puri- 

 fying water, but its action is to clarifv a turbid water, 

 and it cannot be relied on to sterilise. Potassium 

 permanganate may be used, but is not very efficient or 

 trustworthy, and both it and alum necessitate the water 

 being left for some hours. Some three or four years 

 ngo Parkes and Rideal introduced bisulphate of soda 

 NO. 1870, VOL. 72] 



for the purpose. It may be put up in tablets, and in 

 quantities of 15 grains to the pint or thereabouts 

 destroys the typhoid bacillus in water within half an 

 hour, imparts little or no taste to the water, and is 

 quite harmless. Lastly, there is the method intro- 

 duced lately by Lieut. Nesfield, I. M.S., in which 

 chlorine is the sterilising agent, and this, after acting, 

 is " killed " by the addition of sulphite of soda. For 

 small quantities of water, iodine may be similarly 

 used. This last method was recently described in 

 Nature (July 27, p. 307), and has much to commend 

 it. R. T. Hewlett. 



PROF. JULES OPPERT. 



ON August 21 died Prof. Jules Oppert, the last 

 of the band of great scholars who were the 

 pioneers of cuneiform decipherment. His name will 

 go down to posterity with those of Rawlinson, 

 Hincks, de Saulcy, and Fox Talbot, with whom he 

 helped to lay the foundations of the flourishing science 

 of Assyriology. Like them, too, he has now laid 

 down the pen for ever. 



Born of Jewish parents in Hamburg on July 9, 

 1825, Jules Oppert began the study of Sanskrit and 

 .Arabic under Lassen and Freytag at Bonn, after- 

 wards devoting himself to Zend and Old Persian at 

 Berlin and Kiel. In 1847 he published his first 

 work, entiled "Das Lautsystem des Altpersischen," 

 in which he discovered that ni and n had to be sup- 

 plied before a following consonant in Old Persian, 

 and thereby supplementing the alphabet. At that 

 time the German law did not permit Jews to hold 

 professorial posts, so in the same year he moved to 

 France, where he was appointed professor of German 

 at Laval, and afterwards, in 1850, at Rheims. The 

 favourable reception accorded to his work on the 

 Achaemenian inscriptions obtained for him, in 1851, a 

 post on the staff of the scientific mission dispatched 

 to Mesopotamia by the French Government, under 

 MM. Fresnel and Thomas. 



On his return in 1854, Oppert devoted himself 

 entirely to the study of Assyrian and Babylonian, and 

 between 1857 and 1863 the several volumes of his 

 great work " Expedition scientifique en M^so- 

 potamie " saw the light. While the linguistic value 

 of this has always been of the greatest importance, 

 the topography is less fortunate, the late author 

 having been led into the mistake that the ruins of 

 ancient Babylon were much larger than they really 

 are. In 1855 he visited the British Museum and the 

 museums of Germany to report on the progress made 

 in cuneiform studies, and on his return in the follow- 

 ing year he was decorated with the Cross of the 

 Legion of Honour, and obtained the post of professor 

 of Sanskrit and comparative philology at the school 

 of languages attached to the Imperial Library at 

 Paris. Two years previously he had become a 

 naturalised Frenchman. In 1859 he published a 

 Sanskrit grammar, closely followed by " Elements 

 de la Grammaire assyrienne." In 1865 there appeared 

 from his pen a short history of Babylonia and Assyria. 

 In 1881 he succeeded the late M. Mariette as a 

 member of the Institute of France, being elected 

 president of the same society ten years later — perhaps 

 the highest honour a French sava)it can receive. 



The versatility of the late Prof. Oppert was extra- 

 ordinary. His papers, published in various scientific 

 journals, cover an astonishing range of subjects. 

 Not the least interesting are his contributions to 

 astronomical chronology, in which subject he took 

 a deep interest. In "La Chronologic biblique fix^e 

 par les Eclipses des Inscriptions cun^iforme " (Rev. 

 Archeol., 1868) he attempted to reconcile the dates 



