The London Water - Supply. By Richard Sisley, M.D. (Scientific Press. 21s.)—Dr.
Sisley remarks, with perfect truth, that certain editors treat the question of the London water-supply "from a political point of view." Two Radical journals in particular did their best to make political capital out of the " East London water-famine," apparently believing that the drought was a malignant device of a Tory Government, as were the blue-bottle flies of an earlier generation. Here we have the results of a scientific investigation, confined to the questions, " What are the sources of the present water.supply ? How is the water treated, and how distributed ?" It was carried out at the cost of the Lancet newspaper, which has thus added another to the many services which it has rendered to the public health. One turns naturally to the account of the East London Waterworks Com- pany. It has been in existence a little more than ninety years, its earliest station being Old Ford, the scene of the disastrous out- break of cholera in 1866, an outbreak which coincided in extent almost exactly with the district supplied by the Old Ford reservoirs. These were consequently abandoned. Its principal source of supply is still from the Lea. We cannot attempt to epitomise Dr. Sisley's report, but it is manifest, to say the least, that the Company has to contend with very considerable diffieulties. It is enough to refer the reader to the description given on pp. 78.80.—another subject of the greatest importance to the public health is treated in Vaccination : its Natural History and Pathology, by S. Monckton Copeman, M.D. (Macmillan and Co., 6s.) Here one turns to the chapter (9) on " Glycerinated Lymph." Dr. Copeman thinks that the dangers of arm-to-arm vaccination are comparatively small. Still, there have been cases, though "extraordinarily small in number," where syphilis has been thus communicated; and others, possibly more doubtful, where erysipelas and tuber- culosis have been caused (it is frequently forgotten that the infection may have come from outside when the vaccination wound was opened). That all these dangers are absolutely removed by the use of glycerinated lymph he is certain. The glycerine is absolutely pure, is mixed with sterilised distilled water, and the mixture again sterilised. " I trust," writes Dr. Copeman, " that the Government will shortly be in a position to supply bacteriologically pure and fully active calf lymph in any quantity that may be found desirable."
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