SEWAGE AND DISEASE.

Temuka Leader, Volume I, Issue 77, 11 September 1878, Page 3

SEWAGE AND DISEASE.

(‘Pali Mall Budget.’) A series of instructive answers relative to the influence of sewage in water in causing disease has been re ceived by the Society of Arts in reply to a set of queries addressed by it to the various sanitary authorities. One hundred and one replies from as many different towns and cities form a little encyclopaedia of opinion and experience. Question No, 4 was—“ Can you give any information from your own observation of sewage-polluted water spreadingjepideraic disease?” Out of the 101 answers no fewer than 44 are in the affirmative; some of these, however, appear to mean that the disease caused was confined to those who drank the water, and did not spread further. The diseases principally observed as resulting from this cause were fever, typhoid, diphtheria, diarrhoea, nausea, and worms. Wells were the most frequent sources of infection, sewage having soaked into them. From Warwick comes a.remark of the observer there that in towns he has noticed the spread of epidemic disease has been more frequently traceable to faulty and unventilated drainage, or to private wells which have become polluted, than to the public water supply. The reply from Willenhall corroborates this, as a district there, formerly affected by typhoid, has not been visited since waterworks took the place of a supply from shallow wells and sewage-polluted streams. At Peterborough it is stated that the water supply is derived from wells sunk an) r where.” “ For ten years,” writes the observer, “we have not been without typhoid fever epidemic in parts of the town ; parts since supplied with good water are free.” To the question (No. 6) whether water containing sewage from a district where there is no epedemic is injurious to health ; and, if not injurious, to what extent it must be diluted, nineteen answers have been received Of these, fifteen reply that polluted water, even when there is no epedemic, will cause a “ general unhealthiness ” diarrhoea, dysentery, and gastric fever. Three say that it is not injurious, and the remaining one is to the effect that nothing definite is known. Of the three, however, which say that it is not, two speak of water very largely diluted, as after downward intermittent filtration on twenty acres of land, the effect of which was that the effluent water contained only one part in 200,000 of nitrates, and was drunk by the labourers without harm. ' Another observer, writing from Carlisle, though he thinks that no more than one grain of organic matter in 70, 000 (or a gallon) may be safe, yet says emphatically “we should inexorably prohibit any and every addition of sewage to water which is or may be used for drinking or for cookery. Let no idea of dilution delude us,” No more terribly significant statements have ever appeared in so condensed a form and from so wide an area. ’ Almost everywhere the water polluted with sewage caused disease, which was absent from places provided with good water. What an immense amount of preventable suffering do these facts imply!