ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the origins of Edward Frankland’s views on water quality and the structure of his system of analysis. It considers Frankland’s disproof of the process of oxidative self-purification, and the credibility of Frankland’s ideas in regard to the context of distrust. Frankland also testified at the June 1866 hearings on the Thames Navigation Bill. Frankland represented Thames basin paper manufacturers who contended that their pollutions did not adversely affect the potability of Thames water. Frankland had recommended a massive program of filtration through animal charcoal which he believed would remove from water all organic matter. By early 1868, therefore, Frankland had worked out a philosophy and set of procedures for water quality evaluation that remained fundamentally intact until the late 1880s. The transformation of Frankland’s ideas from putrefying organic nitrogen to resistant germs cannot be explained as a function of the advance of medical science.
