78 DEATH OF HORSES AND COWS FROM DRINKING BAD WATER. 
mitted to Dr. Beckit Truman^ Castle Gate, Nottingliam, and 
his analysis of the same is appended below. Mr. Alderman 
Page deserves the thanks of the town for dealing so promptly 
■with the subject, as apart from the importance of the facts 
revealed by this investigation to the grazing interest, the 
question is one of great moment to the general public of the 
town and district. 
Report on the Three Specimens 0 /Water Supplied 
to Me for Analysis. 
None of the waters contain poison. The water, in all 
three cases, was unfit to drink on account of the amount of 
mineral matter, especially of the lime salts, which it con¬ 
tained. These, however, would not produce the symptoms 
under which the cattle laboured. The great amount of 
organic matter in the water obtained from the stagnant pond 
points to that as the cause of disease in this case. Although 
the precise cause of malarious diseases is not known, they are 
believed to arise from, or to be communicated by, drinking 
the stagnant water found in marshy situations. So long ago 
as the time of Hippocrates, it w^as said that the spleens of 
those that drink the water of marshes become enlarged and 
hard.^^ The post-mortem appearance of the cattle presented 
the lesion known as splenic apoplexy,^^ a malarious disease. 
I am, therefore, of opinion that the cattle died of acute ma¬ 
larious disease, brought on by drinking the water from the 
stagnant pond. The dike w^ater was tolerably pure. 
Aug. 25th.’^ E. BECKIT TRUMAN. 
“ 1 .—Analysis of Waterj labelled ^ Dike Water.^ 
Slightly milky, slight musty smell, neither ammonia nor 
sulphuretted hydrogen. A very decided brownish sedi¬ 
ment. 
Under the microscope, this showed numbers of living- 
creatures ; a few small w^orms; two kinds of rotifers wdth 
their eggs j a cyclops; numbers of diatoms, and infusoria; 
hair of some animal; decaying vegetable fibre and leaves, 
&c. 
Reagents detected the following mineral substances :— 
Lime, free acid, chlorine, sulphuric acid, magnesia. 
There was no metallic poison, no ammonia, no sulphuretted 
hydrogen. 
