9 8 
THOMPSON YATES AND JOHNSTON LABORATORIES REPORT 
This is a question which cannot be settled off-hand or by one series of 
observations. 
It must be remembered that such water would contain not only bacteria 
and their toxines, but also waste products secreted from the skin of the bather, which 
are perhaps harmful. The injurious effect, it any, of bathing in dirty water would 
largely depend on the quantity and the nature of the bacteria swallowed. Drinking 
water rarely contains more than 50 bacteria per c.c, and 300 bacteria per c.c. probably 
represent the highest limit of safety, not because the bacteria are themselves harmful, 
but because their presence is an indication of sewage contamination. The number of 
organisms in fresh water, river or lake, unless there has been extensive sewage 
contamination, is considerably less per c.c. than in a first-class swimming bath at the 
end ot a summer's day. It is absurd to hold that bath water containing a multitude 
ot microbes is necessarily injurious to the bather — it is not meant to drink, 
The average bather only swallows a very little, and when we consider that his 
mouth and alimentary canal is swarming with bacteria, that his skin is normally 
covered with them, and that he may swallow thousands in a glass of milk, a few more 
from a bath are of no consequence provided they are non-pathogenic. 
Of course, if the inhabitants ot Liverpool suddenly made a practice of 
drinking the dirty water trom their second class swimming baths, even though 
they might not contract typhoid, their general health would be impaired, and their 
resistance to disease lessened ; perhaps they would suffer from dyspepsia. On the 
other hand, a bather might swallow with impunity an occasional mouthful of water 
full of bacteria. 
Bathing in swimming baths might produce injurious effects in several ways. 
1 . The so-called 'chill ' trom staying in too long has occasionally been tollowed 
by nephritis, perhaps pneumonia. Regulations state that no bather must remain in 
the water more than half-an-hour, but boys frequently evade this, and are consequently 
liable, as we have found, to suffer from cold in the head, etc. In our opinion, a 
quarter-of-an-hour or twenty minutes in the bath is ample for the average person. 
1. A microbic disease, like typhoid or diphtheria, or an infectious one like 
scarlet, might possibly be contracted from polluted water. 
With regard to typhoid, it appears that typhoid bacilli may remain in the 
urine and faeces of those convalescent from the disease much longer than was 
previously suspected ; typhoid bacilli may therefore occasionally enter a bath. But 
arguing from the average number of coh introduced into a bath by one bather, it is 
probable that the number of typhoid bacilli introduced by one individual, whether he 
was convalescent or suffering from the ambulatory form, would be so small that, when 
diluted in thousands of gallons of water, another bather would have to drink a pint 
or more in order to swallow even half-a-dozen ; besides, it is questionable whether the 
ingestion of half-a-dozen typhoid bacilli will necessarily produce typhoid. 
