naturally yielded the more valuable scientific results, bacteriological work the more
directly utilitarian.
2. The scope of the work can be best gathered from the papers, which discuss
under separate headings the different results achieved. Some explanation is how-
ever required as to the reasons or circumstances which have directed research on
the lines it has followed.
3. Bacteriological research has in the main been devoted to the bacteriology of
Indian waters for, though other problems also demand attention and will be taken
up in turn, none seem to be of more immediate urgency In Europe the bacterio-
logical examination of waters has been pushed to a high degree of delicacy
enabling the larger corporations to control with certainty the purity of their water
supplies. The idea that this should be applied also to India naturally occurs, but
a moment's consideration will show that there are certain initial difficulties, in so
much as all the standards and even the choice of the organisms used to denote the
standards have been worked out in the waters of temperate climates. So far as I
am aware observations upon tropical waters are very few, though the difference in
temperature must enormously modify bacterial processes and there is no guarantee
that tests found satisfactory in Europe should be equally satisfactory in India.
In the course of examination it was found that the great majority of
Indian waters showed according to European standards what has generally been
taken as meaning definite pollution, i.e., the presence of both, the bacillus
sporo-
genes enteritidis and the bacillus coli communis in comparatively small quantities
of water. This fact at once brings to mind certain conditions existent in India
likely to influence bacteriological results, the presence of dust, of dried cattle
droppings, of chatties and other receptacles used to draw water and to make
one wonder whether for routine use the extremely delicate bacteriological tests are
not too delicate, condemning waters which were for all practical purposes good.
Against this it may be said that pollution by any of the above methods is none the
less pollution, able to give rise to disease should the germs of this be present, it
being obvious that a single apparently clean chatty may, for example, inoculate a
well with cholera. In water supplies therefore pollution however small in amount
cannot be passed over, and the bacteriological tests provided they do actually
demonstrate pollution cannot be too delicate. It becomes then of primary impor-
tance to ascertain the reliability or the reverse of the tests used in Europe as
applied to tropical waters.
This has been the line of research during the year and the results achieved
have already given a certainty to reports upon water samples which was not at
first possible. As year by year the value of further tests is indicated it is hoped
that results will be of corresponding greater practical utility.
Other bacteriological researches have been upon matters which have arisen
from time to time in connection with sanitary work in the Presidency. That upon
the bacteriology of vaccine was deemed advisable in order to assist, when this was
required, the vaccine section. That upon cyllin was undertaken as a result of the
request of the Government of Madras for a report on the value of this substance
as an antiseptic. In bacteriological work the services of Mr. Seethapathi Aiyar,
the Senior Bacteriological Assistant, have been invaluable and. it is mainly due to
the work of this officer that the work has been possible.
4. Protozoological research has dealt mainly with questions connected with
the part played by insects and other bloodsuckers in the transmission of disease.
Ca pt a i n Pa t t on, I . M. S. , who ha s be e n a t t a c he d t o t he I ns t i t ut e dur i ng t he pa s t
year, has been able to devote his time to the study of the Leishman Donovan body.
His researches started from the fact that the parasite had been recorded by two
previous observers, Major Donovan and myself in the leucocytes of the peripheral
blood and the hypothesis then put forward that by this channel they reached the
gut of some bloodsucking insect. They have showed in the first place that at
certain times parasites are present in the peripheral blood in large numbers and
finally that such parasites do, as a matter of fact, undergo development in the gut
of the bug into the flagellate bodies described by Rogers, the almost certain
presumption being that this insect acts as the transmitter of the disease. A study