224 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Oct. 



stream. We had proofs of this, already alluded to, in connection with 

 the amount of prevailing disease — quite independent of difficult 

 chemical analysis. 



Dr. S. said he should like to see placards and sign-hoards put up all 

 along its hanks, bearing the words Poison — unmistakable active poison ; 

 and he would even he glad to know that it was rendered penal for a 

 person to drink of it, exactly on the principle of its being deemed 

 advisable to punish those who might attempt to poison themselves 

 with a solution of arsenic, or any other deleterious substance, which 

 was likely to lead to fatal results. 



With all due respect for Mr. Waldie's patient observations — to his 

 unquestionable fairness and good faith in trying to place truth before 

 the Society ; with all proper regard also for those traditions of the 

 Hindoos that would establish the sanctity and life-inspiring properties 

 of the Ganges, Dr. Smith expressed the conviction that it is an inde- 

 scribably unclean and revoltingly contaminated river, that it is a vehicle 

 for every variety of excrementitious abomination — not only accident- 

 ally found in it, but wilfully deposited in its waters, and that its 

 hygienic qualities are of the lowest possible standard. 



He thought it very important that this fact should be acknowledged ; 

 otherwise the result of Mr. Waldie's experiments would go to prove that 

 it is by no means an unusually tainted river, but, on the contrary, that 

 it is one from which a sufficiently wholesome water-supply might be 

 obtained on this side of Cossipore, an opinion strongly negatived — not 

 only by all past Medical experience in the city, but also by the careful 

 observations and published analyses of Dr. Macnamara. Two-thirds of 

 the admissions into the Hospitals of Calcutta for cholera, Dr. S. remarked, 

 came from the river. This in itself is enough to condemn the Hooghly 

 as a most obnoxious vehicle of poison, because we cannot now evade the 

 conclusion that, where we have excess of cholera, we have an unusual 

 amount of organic impurity in the water used by the persons so affected, 

 — this conclusion being in the present day considered irresistible, as a 

 result of all the study and analyses gone into and published of late years 

 in England, on the subject of cholera and its invariable association with 

 organically unwholesome water. 



Dr. S. said that the experience of man had gone, generally, to 

 prove that the water of rivers near great towns was always unwhole- 



