358 
ON SEWAGE AND PARASITES, ETC. 
by the character of the remarks which fell from Mr. Hope, 
Mr. Smee, Mr. Hawkesley, and Mr. Michael, and partly by 
the suggestions kindly offered by Dr. Buchanan, Dr. Stallard, 
and others, after the close of the last meeting. 
In view of determining the question at issue, it will’tend to 
clear the ground if at the outset I observe that the sort of 
practical evidence most needed is precisely that which cannot 
be readily obtained. Clearly, the examination of the flesh of 
beasts, reared either upon, or by means of fodder derived from, 
sewage-irrigated meadows, w r ould, if conducted by an experi- 
enced helminthologist, yield the required information. When 
Mr. Hope tells us that a cow fed for four years on his sew 7 age 
farm competed for a prize at last Smithfield show, that fact 
does not by any means satisfy me as to the freedom of the 
animal from measles and other entozoa. As I have, in effect, 
already urged, it is useless to talk about the absence of proofs 
of parasitism, as derived frow sewage, when we have no ade- 
quate means of getting at the evidence. Not only is it ne- 
cessary to examine, post-mortem, animals which have been 
secretly hurried off to slaughter-houses as soon as they have 
displayed symptoms of unhealthiness, but we must also 
scrutinise the meat derived from apparently healthy beasts 
sent direct from sewage-farms. It is all very well to say that 
meat for our markets is sufficiently inspected. That it is 
intentionally so in all, and actually so in some instances, I 
do not doubt ; but that the majority of our inspectors pos- 
sess the requisite knowledge of entozoal forms, guaranteeing 
absolute efficiency in respect of their duties, I emphatically 
deny. Not only am I constantly interrogated respecting 
dubious appearances in the flesh of animals used as food, but 
an inspector in one of our largest cities has applied to me 
for specimens, to enable him to identify the cystic entozoa 
of cattle. 
As regards the amount of egg-dispersion by means of 
sewage, I am free to acknowledge the impossibility of ac- 
quiring data capable of affording even an approximatively 
.correct notion. On this score I do not care to insist upon 
the acceptance of conclusions which, for myself, only take 
up the position of strong convictions. If I express the 
opinion that we have a daily entry of 270,000,000 of the ova 
of intestinal worms into the metropolitan sewage, I can offer 
no proof as to the correctness of this surmise ; or if I go 
further, and say that four times that number would probably 
be nearer the mark, my convictions are not disturbed by any 
counter-assertion to the effect that the event is impossible. 
After all, allowing the numbers to amount to 1,080,000,000, 
