Doubtless this seeming inertia of the citizens of Chicago in the matter of filtering their water is attributable to the fact that already the authorities have expended eighty-five million dollars in their waterworks and sewerage systems, which represents an investment of something over fifty dollars per head of population, and that plans in connection with the great canal which has been described as "the greatest feat of sanitary engineering in the world," and to which reference has already been made, will, when carried out, involve an expenditure of thirty or forty million dollars more. In the face of such burdens even so prosperous a community as Chicago does not care to contemplate further capital charges, at any rate until the unsatisfactory conditions shadowed by Dr. Egan become more pressing in regard to the source of their water-supply. The systematic investigations carried out in the great Institutes of Health on the Continent and elsewhere should surely make the sporadic work, as by comparison it must be designated, produced in this country an eloquent argument for the creation of a British Imperial Board of Health adequately endowed by the State, manned by the ablest investigators, and forming a centre for the prosecution of researches which in other countries, as in our own, have contributed so greatly to the health and welfare of mankind. Why should England for ever have to knock at the door of foreign institutes for information and guidance in matters in which once she was the leader and enlightened example to every civilised country? The question of how far polluted water-supplies, besides possessing the potentiality for spreading cholera and typhoid, may disseminate consumption, has been approached in a very instructive manner by Dr. Musehold, of the German Imperial Board of Health. Some ten years ago the discovery of the tubercle bacillus in water for the first time was announced by a Spanish investigator, Fernandez. The water containing the bacillus tuberculosis was derived from an open ditch, and hence had been doubtless exposed to contamination of divers kinds. In the course of the elaborate experiments on London sewage and its treatment, carried out by Professor Frank Clowes, Chief Chemist to the London County Council, an instance was recently met with in which a guinea-pig, inoculated with a portion of coke-deposit derived from a bacterial sewage bed, died from typical tuberculosis, and sections of its organs showed the presence of numerous tubercle bacilli. Dr. Musehold has now submitted the whole question of the vitality of virulent tubercle bacilli present in the expectorations of consumptive persons in sewage, in river water, and on cultivated land respectively, to an exhaustive examination, and the novelty as well as importance of these researches merit their being carefully considered.