From SCIENCE of December 14th., 1888. 
THE POLLUTION OF WATER-SUPPLIES. 
Dr. Charles Smart, Surgeon U. S. A., presented a report at tlie recent meeting of 
the American Public Health Association on the pollution of water-supplies. 
The report gives special emphasis to the conclusion reached at the previous meeting, 
that, when there is sewage in a water-supply, there is danger of typhoid infection. Some 
of the evidence is briefly cited; and financial interests involved are held responsible for 
the hesitancy to acknowledge this specific danger, for as soon as a city relieves itself 
from the oppression of the moneyed interests, aud procures a wholesome water for its 
citizens, it immediately recognizes the connection between sewage and typhoid. Yienna 
recognized this connection when it found that, by substituting the water of a mountain- 
stream for the sewage-water of the Danube, its annual deaths from typhoid fell from 
three hundred and forty to fifty, and shortly afterwards to eleven, in every hundred 
thousand of the population ; and an improved sewage system had nothing to do with this, 
as the sewage system was in existence during the period of high typhoid rates. 
The efforts made by municipal authorities and water companies are then passed in 
review'. The advantages of sedimentation, which is the method generally adopted in this 
country, are recognized, and particularly when sedimentation is prompted by ihe use of 
precipitants, such as chloride of iron, as recently suggested by L. H. Gardner, of Hew 
Orleans, La. The changes that take place during storage are held to be purifying in 
their nature, notwithstanding the vast increase in the number of bacteria developed in 
the stored waters. The slowness of the sedimenting process, often necessitating a large 
expenditure for storage-basins, has led to the experimental use of such filtering beds as 
are employed so generally for municipal supplies in England; but the expense attending 
them is large, and the coldness of our winters begets difficulties which are not encountered 
in the milder climate of England. Attention is then directed to the patent filters that 
have of late been manufactured for use on a large scale. Their ability to furnish a clear 
water is conceded; but the object of the filtration of a water-supply for domestic or 
public service is its wholesomeness when used for drinking, and its transparency gives 
no testimony on this point. -Artificial filtration has neither the time nor the surface to 
effect percolation after nature’s methods. In these artificial filters, as much water is 
transmitted under pressure in half an hour as nature purifies on the same area annually. 
Bacteria of nitrification, which effect the purification during the passage of a w'ater 
through the soil, cannot be harnessed to the vrork of the artificial filter. Artificial filtra- 
tion consists of the mechanical separation of a water from its suspended impurities, 
while the essential of natural filtration is the thorough nitrification of the dissolved 
albuminoids of the water, the removal of the suspended matters being incidental and 
merely secondary. But although sedimentation and filtration give a more or less clear water, and one in 
which the organic matters that are prone to decompose are destroyed and rendered harm- 
less by bacterial agencies, if an infected sewage has entered the water, the living germs 
of typhoid fever are not removed or deprived of their virulence by any of these modes of 
purification. The infected water which prostrated twelve hundred of the eight thousand 
inhabitants of Plymouth, Penn., and killed a hundred and thirty of those whom it pro- 
straterl, passed through three storage-reservoirs on its way to accomplish its deadly mis- 
sion ; and the springs of Lauzun, in Switzerland, contained the germs and propagated the 
disease, although their waters had undergone a thorough filtration. From the particulars 
of the latter epidemic, it is held, that, while sewage irrigation may give effluents that will 
preserve our streams from becoming open sewers, it will never furnish a water which can 
be afterwards used as a drinking-supply. 
The conclusion reached is an emphasized reiteration of that of every committee 
which has investigated this subject,—that a water to which sewage has had access should, 
from that fact alone, be excluded from all further consideration as a possible water-supply 
for domestic purposes. Money is held to be all that is wanting to solve the question of 
pure water-supplies. Engineering difficulties fall into insignificance when surveyed from 
a satisfactory financial standpoint. It is often said to be beyond the power of money to 
purchase health, but the sanitary student can readily demonstrate that in many cases this 
is not so. Money expended in the distribution of a wholesome water-supply will purchase 
health for the thousands who otherwise fall victims to the fever which is endemic in our 
cities and towns. 
The germ of disease may not be in this pitcherful or in that, in this tumblerful or in 
that, but it will find us some day, if we continue to use the water which contains it. In a 
town of fifty thousand inhabitants, one victim is taken daily; and, as the average dura- 
tion of this fever is about a month, there are always in that city thirty persons whose 
lives are unnecessary trembling in the balance. What is the local suffering from yellow- 
fever in Jacksonville, Pensacola, or New Orleans, once in so many years, compared with 
the totality of the devastation caused by the steady progress of this general and ever-pre- 
sent scourge ? Thirty thousand people die of typhoid fever annually in the United States 
of America; and Vienna lowered her losses by this fever from three hundred and forty 
to eleven annually in every hundred thousand of her population, by introducing a spring- 
water supply instead of the sewage-tainted waters of the Danube. Calculate the loss by 
sickness associated with these'thirty thousand deaths,—the loss of work, the unprofitable 
work of nursing, and the actual outlay necessitated by each visitation of the disease,—and 
you will find that saving money by drinking sewage in tile water.supply is a penny-wise 
policy, that, in the long-run, will fail to pay even for the funerals and mourning goods. 
The importance of acting promptly is insisted upon, as the longer a community pro- 
crastinates, the greater is the difficulty experienced in procuring a desirable supply of 
water, owing to the increasing density of the population of the surrounding country. .