The Sun.
London, England, 1855-07-16 00:00:00

THE THAMES AS A SOURCE OF DISEASE.

(From the Lancet of Tull, 14th, 1855.)

The two millions and a half of human beings crowded
together within the limits of this metropolis, still live
on in passive apathy in the midst of, all those elements
which may, at any moment, under the influence of a
summer sun, burst forth into pestiferous activity.
In spite of warnings without end, in contempt of past
experience, we still continue to inhale a poison-laden
atmosphere, and to drink water the multitudinous
organic and inorganic impurities of which almost defy the
combined labours of the chemist and microscopist to de-
scribe. We still do our best to pollute and convert into
a common sewer that noble stream which should bring
to us health as well as wealth. But Mammon engrosses
every thought. The Thames bears upon its buoyant
tide riches for the merchant, whilst its waters are swollen
with the feculence of the myriads of living beings that
dwell upon its banks, and with the waste of every
manufacture that is too foul for utilisation. What mat-
ter ? The merchant is served, and the population is
spared the trouble of constructing a cloaca maxima.
But greed and apathy combine to exact from that
cloaca maxima a double duty, which they have rendered
it incapable of discharging. A sewer can be nothing but
a sewer. But with a perversity besotted and revolting,
we persist in drawing from our sewer the—shall we call
it water ?—that we drink ; and thousands upon thou-
sands daily travel on its seething bosom bent on business
or pleasure ! Wheresoever we go, whatsoever we eat or
drink within the circle of London, we find tainted with
the Thames. It is the fate of a Londoner that he cannot
stir abroad or stay at home without inhaling or imbib-
ing the Thames in some form or other. He stores up a
portion of it in his tank, to ferment into noxious gaees,
and breed a hideous fauna at leisure ; he scents it as it
returns through the streets, after fulfilling all culinary,
alimentary, cleansing, and eliminative wants of man,
to the foul bed whence it came ; the great stream, fed
by innumerable lesser cloacw, must then serve to bear
the citizen on his excursions from one part of the town to
another. He feeds upon the Thames : he breathes it.
The Thames is a part, and a large part, of his organ-
ism. Rightly io we speak of Father Thames ! He is
all in all to us. His muddy tide lives in our veins, and
gives us our bone and muscle. Since he forms so inti-
mate a condition of our existence, it would seem to be but
rational on our part to take a little more care of our
parent, and to keep him clean and wholesome. But we
play the part of profligate and graceless children ; like
ill birds, we befoul our own nest ; we pursue a reckless
and insensate career, perverting a bountiful inheritance
to the vilest and most self-destroying uses.
If we wish to preserve the town in which we dwell in
a state fit for habitation, or rather to reclaim it, we must
determine without delay to stop the chief sources of pollu-
tion of the river. This, of course, cannot he done with-
out providing new means for carrying off the excremen-
titious matters of our vast population. This, it will be
said, as it has often been said, is a work of time ; but if
we never begin, it is not simply a work of time, but of
eternity. We must begin, and begin in earnest. No
one having eyes, nose, or taste, can look upon the
Thames and not be convinced that its waters are
year by year, and day by day, getting fouler and
more pestilential. The areat philosopher whose obser-
vations we publish elsewhere, who has the rare and in-
valuable talent of illustrating everything by a happy
experiment, shows us that the Thames water is already
so turbid, that the lower part of a hit of card, sinking
edgeways, is invisible before the upper part has become
immersed. Before long its poisonous properties must
inevitably arrive at such a pitch of concentration that we
shall every year be visited with fevers not less fatal than
those which annually spread desolation throughout the
diluvial city of New Orleans. We cannot stop where
we are, bad as our condition already is ; we must go on
from bad to worse. The abominations, the corruptions
we pour into the Thames are not, as some fondly hope,
or falsely say, carried away into the sea. The sea re-
jects the loathesomo tribute, and heaves it back again
with every flew. Here, in the heart of the doomed city,
it accumulates and destroy,. The statement of Sir B.
Hall, in reply to a question in the House of Commons,
indicates the obstacles that for the present defeat all
hope of stopping the defilement of the river. Our health
and our lives are in imminent peril, and we are waiting
for an Act of Parliament !

But there is nothing to be done whilst we are revolv-
ing the means of arresting the further contamination of
the Thames ? Can, we not, to some extent, avoid the
dangers that surround us ? Yes. We may escape a part
of the penalties of our past and present folly. We can-
not help breathing an atmosphere tainted with the
gaseous emanations of the river wehave madeinto a sewer,
but we need not drink its water ; we need not cook our
food with it ; we need not wash with it, nor need we
travel upon it. The time is at hand when it will become
compulsory upon the water companies to ascend for their
sources of supply to a part of the river beyond the reach
of the tides. Tolerate no evasion, no delay, in the ful-
filment of this contract. The fluid they continue to sell
us in the meantime should be carefully boiled and fil-
tered before u,e. And we earnestly and emphatically
exhort every cne who values his health and life, either
!or his own sake, or than cf his family, to abstain
during the summer months from travelling upon any
part of the river between Richmond and Blackwall.
Shun it as if it were Acheron itself.

Had we pure air and pure water, the salubrity of this
huge metropolis would, in all probability, not be much
inferior to the most favoured spots in the country ; but,
pure air we cannot have unless we first of all purify the
Thames.