74 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[July 23, 1870. 
it, was utterly inadequate for the quantity put upon it, 
and that, from the nature of the irrigation, the sewage 
water carried over the fields could only he used upon a 
very small scale, while the greater part of it necessarily 
ran away into the river. He could not help thinking 
that in most cases this must he the result. It was not 
for him to say what was the right method of getting- 
over the extraordinary difficulty which the public were 
called upon to face, hut that some method must he 
adopted was evident. The question before the meeting 
was whether that particular method of carrying on the 
work suggested by the Royal Commission on the Pollu¬ 
tion of Rivers was likely to he practically useful. As 
far as his own experience and knowledge were concerned, 
it seemed to him that the method of carrying away the 
sewage and utilizing it by irrigation might he successful 
upon a small scale, where the population was limited and 
the acreage was large; hut he could not see much pro¬ 
bability of its being successful upon a large scale, for 
what upon a small scale would practically do no harm— 
say in the case of 200 or 300 acres—would he attended 
with very serious results in the case of a large city or 
town. It might he very well in the case of Croydon, 
where the population was small, hut the limits of the 
adaptability of the system were soon reached, and could 
not he advantageously extended. 
Mr. Liddle remarked that in dealing with the subject 
they had two enthusiasts to encounter—Dr. Letheby and 
Dr. Frankland—whose papers were always read with 
attention, and probably between the two some useful in¬ 
formation might he gathered. He was disappointed in 
the paper just read, because it contained very little which 
was of practical benefit to the meeting as a body of sani¬ 
tary officers. It raised objections to the existing modes 
of operation, but it gave them no hint as to what could 
be done with the sewage, how to utilize it without 
creating a nuisance, and exposing the community to 
those fatal consequences which Dr. Cobbold had de¬ 
scribed. 
Mr. Creasy thought it was necessary to explain in 
some degree the sort of conflict of evidence which had 
taken place. When Beddington was mentioned, it should 
be known that it was a large district, and that a portion 
of it had little to do with the sewage question. The 
sewage fields of Croydon had been well chosen with re¬ 
ference to population, but certainly in every cottage on 
the estate there had been typhoid fever through the 
whole course of the time—not a cottage had escaped. 
And as to the outfall at Beddington Comer, every well 
was contaminated, and not a house was free from fever. 
At Carshalton he had had cases of enteric attack. At 
Beddington Comer, near the outfall, four children had 
been taken out of one house in a day stricken down with 
scarlet fever. 
Dr. Carpenter interposed the remark that the local 
nuisances in connection with those cottages were quite 
sufficient to produce all the fever complained of, without 
seeking a cause in the outfall sewer a quarter of a mile 
off. 
Mr. Creasy said that might be, but the watershed 
went in that direction. In every one of those houses an 
examination of the tongues of the inhabitants would 
show that there was enteric irritation. The same indi¬ 
cations which were caused by the Croydon sewage on 
one spot arose from the existence of cesspools on an¬ 
other. 
Mr. Hawksley said he could fully justify the state¬ 
ments made by Mr. Creasy, for few persons were better 
acquainted than himself with the results of the irrigation 
works at Beddington Corner. He had been profes¬ 
sionally called down to look at those works at intervals 
for many years, and also in consequence of complaints 
having arisen, although Dr. Carpenter stated there had 
been no such complaints since 1860. When on other 
occasions he had been in the neighbourhood on totally 
different business, he had taken samples of the water as 
it fell into the Wandle, and had them analysed. He 
had also been up the stream, and looked at the con¬ 
fluence of the two waters, which ran over the meadows 
in different directions. On one recent occasion he found 
one of those waters exceedingly clear, and the other 
about as foul as it could be. These two waters met, and 
passed down by the side of the cottages just mentioned, 
and thence to the Wandle. In the month of February 
last he was down there; the sewage was then frozen 
over the whole surface of the land for acres and acres, 
and was not in the state which Dr. Carpenter had de¬ 
scribed. But, besides that, he had been there in the 
summer, and in the sununer it depended very much 
upon the state of the water whether the sewage, 
when passed upon the land, stank or not. In warm 
weather it often stank frightfully, especially on “muggy” 
evenings. The sewage then gave off a very sickening, 
though not necessarily a very powerful odour. The 
same sort of thing occurred everywhere when sewage 
was applied to land—at the Barking farm, at Edinburgh, 
at Aldershot, and every place he had visited. It had 
been stated, to his great surprise, in the course of this 
discussion, that at Carlisle the sewage did not stink. 
Most assuredly it did in hot weather, although the entire 
quantity of sewage put upon the enormous acreage of land 
there was only from 200,000 gallons a day as a minimum, 
to something under 400,000 gallons as a maximum, which 
was only one-sixth of the sewage of Carlisle. And it 
was there of so little value that the other five-sixths 
were allowed to run away into the river, though the 
acreage of land for its reception was sufficient to utilize 
the whole. As to the commercial economy of the system, 
he had made a great many inquiries, and he had been 
told very frequently of crops being sold at £18, £20, and 
even £25 an acre, and that every one was delighted with 
the effects. But when he came to ask what was the net 
result of the year’s working, he was answered, “ Ah, 
that is another thing.” “ Well, but what is it ? ” “W ell, 
we lost so many hundred pounds last year,” and in some 
cases so many thousands. There was not one single 
place he had heard of where the application of sewage 
for the purpose of sanitary disinfection was proved to be 
a commercial success. It was a commercial success at 
Edinburgh. Why? Because it was not applied for 
sanitary purposes. They used as much as they required 
for irrigation purposes, and the remainder ran into the 
sea or river nearly as foul as when it entered upon the 
land. But this was not the question now before the 
meeting. The question before them was one which 
almost every one could answer for himself. Take the 
case of plain irrigation by water only—pure water— 
water issuing, as in the majority of irrigation schemes in 
this country, from chalk springs. They all knew that 
when water was put upon land in certain seasons of the 
year in that state it did fertilize the land, and good grass 
crops ensued. But what was the result in a sanitary 
point of view ? Fever and ague were produced. G-o to 
Italy. He had been over all the irrigation works there, 
extending for 200 miles in one way, by 60 or 70 in the 
other, and what was the result ? The people were in a 
state of actual decrepitude, not simply affected with fever, 
but with rheumatic complaints, and there was a great 
deal of cretinism. The same thing existed in the south 
of France, where irrigation by water only was adopted. 
Superadd to this foul organic matter, and what must be 
the result ? He believed there was really nothing to be 
learned upon the subject. His own opinion was that of 
all unsanitary applications the most unsanitary was that 
of the application of sewage to land by way of irriga¬ 
tion. 
Mr. Creasy said the Beddington grass was irrigated 
as long as it could stand up, and then it was sent away 
to market with the sewage some inches up the stem. 
So that if Dr. Cobbold was right, there was an opportu¬ 
nity for the development of entozoa there. 
Dr. Letheby, in bringing the discussion to a close, 
