July 23, 1870.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
73 
case by the irrigation system was purely imaginary. 
Where was the evidence of disease having been produced 
where the system was adopted ? He had made inquiries 
on the subject and could find none. At Carlisle he asked 
whether the sheep had the rot, and was answered that 
they had not. At Edinburgh cows had been fed with 
grass from the irrigated meadows for sixty or seventy 
years, but there was no evidence of the prevalence of 
disease among them. It was true that they were not 
very healthy, but this arose from their mode of life. 
Everything was done to stimulate the production of milk 
from them, and they suffered from want of exercise and 
fresh air. Sewage was nothing but manure suspended 
in water, and the error was not in putting it on the land 
at all, but in putting it on in excess. At Carlisle he had 
been told that the residents in the neighbourhood of the 
irrigated fields were unhealthy, but on inquiry it turned 
out that there were no inhabitants in close proximity, 
and of those who were anywhere near, there were abun¬ 
dant causes of unhealthiness in the condition of their 
houses. 
Dr. Carpenter considered that the arguments of Dr. 
Letheby were based upon a false foundation, and that 
either ho had little practical acquaintance with the facts 
from which he had drawn his inferences, or had taken 
only such portions of them as were calculated to sustain 
his view of the case. Dr. Letheby had alluded to some 
statements made by him, and had specially referred to 
the sanitary state of the fields at Beddington. The 
people of Croydon were among the earliest to adopt any 
sanitary arrangements at all. They were compelled 
to adopt some plan, because of the terrors of the law—no 
less than five or six injunctions having been obtained 
against them, and the Local Board were threatened with 
committal to prison unless they ceased to do certain acts. 
That was in 1858, and in 1859 and 1860 they obtained 
powers to do what they had since continued to do. In 
1860 the irrigation meadows were laid down, and they 
had been in active operation to the present time. Until 
this year no complaint, either officially or otherwise, had 
been made of injury arising from these meadows. Pre¬ 
vious to 1860, the town had been put to thousands of 
pounds expense for damage occasioned by the sewage, 
but from that year till within the last nine months they 
had been free from such liability. In 1860 they laid 
down 276 acres of land for the purpose of irrigation, and 
to remove the mischief which 19,000 people produced by 
their sewage. Since then the population of the town 
had increased to 50,000, and he was free to confess that 
the quantity of sewage was too much for the land. The 
result had been that occasionally of late the water was 
not so effectually purified as it should have been. Until 
1867 no cases of fever occurred there. The water of the 
effluent stream passed through the grounds of a gentle¬ 
man residing in the neighbourhood, and even at the pre¬ 
sent time trout might be seen swimming about in it. 
That being the case, was it not evident the plan adopted 
for dealing with the sewage was the correct plan ? In¬ 
deed, Dr. Letheby said so himself, and it had been shown 
in that room that, if sewage were made to pass through 
five feet of earth, it would be rendered perfectly in¬ 
nocuous, and would be perfectly oxidized. Surely, then, 
the passage of sewage over land where it was exposed to 
the air, and came in contact with growing vegetable 
matter, would remove from it all those elements which 
were injurious to health, and the water would go off per¬ 
fectly pure. Dr. Letheby was in the position of an 
engineer, who, some years ago, wrote a pamphlet to 
prove that it was totally impossible for a steamboat to 
cross the Atlantic, because she could not carry sufficient 
coals, the pamphlet being issued at the very moment 
that a steamer was actually accomplishing the feat. The 
town of Croydon was a standing proof that sewage could 
be successfully disposed of in the way Dr. Letheby as¬ 
serted to be impossible. "With regard to the question of 
health, he might state that, since the beginning of the 
year, there had not been a single case of fever reported 
to the Board of Guardians from Beddington, and he 
might add, as the medical attendant of most of the 
wealthy families there, that ho had not had a single case 
of fever, either typhus or typhoid, among them since the 
irrigation meadows commenced. With reference to the 
effect upon the inhabitants of Croydon proper, surely, if 
the emanations from the farms were so dangerous as re¬ 
presented, the inhabitants of the densely populated low- 
lying parts, which were within 500 yards of the outfall 
of those farms, would have suffered from typhoid. But 
for a long- period there had not been a single case in that 
low district, and with the exception of a few cases of 
scarlet fever there had been no fever there at all. The 
irrigation system went on during the winter as well as 
the summer, and in the former period of the year the 
water had gone off pretty nearly tree from those elements 
which were injurious. This was the result of experience 
of the system forced upon the parish of Croydon, and 
which they had not taken up of their own will. Having 
observed the system, and seen its effects, he was positively 
convinced that the air which passed over the fields, in¬ 
stead of being injurious, was a benefit to the people 
living around. It was a positive fact, with regard to 
Norwood, that the moment the irrigation fields were 
established the mortality fell from 18 to 15, and had re¬ 
mained so. Dr. Letheby said he had evidence of water 
coming off the fields in an impure state. He (Dr. Car¬ 
penter) knew that there had been such instances, arising 
from the fact that persons had gone to the fields, broken 
down the carriers, and pulled at the sluices, letting the 
water out. Dr. Letheby knew very well that the argu¬ 
ment to be drawn from the chemical analysis of the 
water was valueless, unless he was aware of all the cir¬ 
cumstances of the case. 
Professor Ansted, being referred to by the chairman, 
as having had experience of these matters in connection 
with the city of Milan, said he hardly felt qualified to 
take part in the discussion, although, perhaps, so far as a 
certain amount of familiarity with works of this kind 
went, he might be able to afford some little information. 
The general subject appeared to him as far more belong¬ 
ing to the medical man than the geological engineer, if 
he might so denominate himself. Having had the op¬ 
portunity, now and then, of noticing the results obtained 
during the irrigation of considerable tracts of land on a 
large scale, with material more or less mixed up with 
sewage, he thought he was justified in saying that in 
most cases, if not in all, those results had been certainly 
unfavourable to the general health of the neighbourhood. 
The chairman alluded to his experience at Milan. He 
knew the town well, and the way in which the sewage 
was conducted over the fields in the lower part of the 
town, and he believed, on the evidence of medical men— 
some of whom had been examined by parliamentary com¬ 
mittees in this country, and whose evidence might be 
found in blue-books—that the result of the system pur¬ 
sued there was eminently unsatisfactory with regard to 
the health of the people living near where the works 
were carried on; and it was not astonishing, for no one 
could go into the lower parts of the town near the stream 
and the works without being conscious of their being 
eminently disagreeable, and probably unhealthy. The 
Italians were not particular on the subject of smells, but 
it was confessed that these were very objectionable. The 
sewage was carried over the fields, and took its course. 
Sometimes it was used, and in all probability, when that 
was the case, it passed off the ground without doing any 
damage to the water of the stream ; but during a great 
part of the year such was not the fact, and the conse¬ 
quence was that the stream in its course was much pol¬ 
luted. And this was a result which he had also ob¬ 
served in other parts of the world. A few days previous 
he had the opportunity of visiting the irrigation works 
at Aldershot, and there it was perfectly clear to him that 
the farm which took the camp sewage and was working 
