Abstract
THE influence of sewage on potable waters is again being discussed. Herr R. Emmerich—in Bied. Centralblatt—makes an original contribution to the subject. He has for a long time daily drunk from a half to one litre of water from one of the Munich brooks which receives sewage of every kind; he has satisfied himself that there were cases of typhoid in some of the houses which drained into the brook. No bad effects having followed the consumption of this beverage, Herr Emmerich invites other experimenters to pursue investigations similar to his own! The same observer, however, finds that sewage water produces death in rabbits when injected subcutaneously in quantities of from 6 to 60 c.c., rabbits of a similar size being killed by the injection of 200 c.c. of distilled water. The injection of the residue from the evaporation of 500 c.c. of sewage water produced strong convulsions and death in rabbits. He proposes that suspected water may be examined by injecting 40 to 80 cc. under the skin of a full-grown rabbit; if no rise of temperature greater than 1° occurs, or if death does not quickly follow the injection, the water would probably be unin-jurious to human beings drinking it.
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Chemical Notes . Nature 22, 349–350 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/022349a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/022349a0