Constituents of Thames Mud. By Lionel 8. Beale. 7 



animal and organic poisons dangerous to life, it is an admitted fact 

 that a quantity easily carried by a very small fly might be suf- 

 ficient to infect a considerable number of persons ; and therefore 

 the fact of the small proportion of organic matter in the Thames 

 mud and in suspension in Thames water cannot reasonably be 

 adduced as an argument in favour of its innocuousness or of its 

 unimportance. But the relative proportion of the organic matter 

 as well as its deleteriousness no doubt varies greatly at different 

 times. I believe all the specimens of mud examined by me have 

 been taken when the river was in flood, or soon afterwards, and at 

 a time of the year when putrefactive decomposition is slowest. 

 From the state of things under these favourable conditions it is 

 hardly possible to determine how very unsatisfactory might be the 

 state of the mud and of the river in hot dry weather. Year by 

 year the actual quantity of sewage must increase, while the amount 

 of water remains the same. In recent years the amount of water 

 in the river and the rainfall have been above the average. At this 

 time (November-December 1882) the degree of dilution is no doubt 

 ample in proportion to the amount of sewage flowing into the river, 

 but even under these favourable conditions disintegration is a very 

 slow process. As the sewage poured into the Thames remains 

 diffused in the water for a substantial time, at some periods of the 

 year the putrefying sewage will be in too large a quantity in 

 proportion to the water in which it is suspended to be properly 

 disintegrated and oxidized, and in too concentrated a form to be 

 appropriated by living animals. 



Constituents of Food found in Thames Mud. 



Of the constituents of human food altered by the process of 

 digestion and by subsequent maceration and disintegration, and 

 by oxidation, not a few are to be found in the mud of the 

 Thames, deposited from the water as it flows up and down the 

 river. It might be supposed that in consequence of the long 

 distance traversed in the sewers and the length of time during 

 which they are suspended in the tidal water, few of the matters in 

 question would be obtained from the mud-banks in a state in which 

 they could be recognized with any certainty by microscopical ex- 

 amination. But in fact a number of bodies with well-marked and 

 unmistakable characters have been found. Among these may be 

 mentioned starch-granules, fragments of vegetable tissue, large 

 spiral fibres of various plants, but particularly of common cabbage, 

 all of which have already passed through the alimentary canal. 

 Tea-leaves, fragments of cooked muscular tissue and yellow elastic 

 tissue in a state in which one often finds them in faecal matter, 

 cotton fibres, probably from paper, fatty matter, and crystals of 



