Elements of Water Bacteriology

Abstract

THIS little volume is practical in its conception, and is concise in treatment. It, of course, presupposes a sound knowledge of general bacteriological methods, but the authors have undoubtedly produced a manual for laboratory use which will be of value to all intelligently engaged in the examination of water. It is up to date in the various methods described, and thirty pages are devoted to a careful index of the contents, a list of memoirs referred to in the text, and the names of authors. Perhaps the most interesting feature in the book is the “change in front,” so to speak, which it indicates some water-bacteriologists are making in regard to the relative importance of the presence of typhoid and colon bacilli respectively in water. A third of the letterpress is devoted to the Bacillus coli communis, its detection and its significance in water, whilst the typhoid bacillus, so long the bête noire of sanitarians, is disposed of in a few pages. The attitude of, at any rate, American authorities is effectively summed up in the following paragraph:—