Late last century there was some controversy among sanitary engineers in this country and in Eiirope concerning which of two methods of sewage treatment should be advocated-chemical or biological treatment. Those who favored the former tried to show that sewage could be treated successfully in much the same manner as surface water is prepared for drinking. However, the advocates of Mother Nature's method-biological treatment-had caught a preliminary glimpse of her seemingly miraculous powers of self-purification and were pressing ahead rapidly with their experiments in this virgin field. In 1890, a report from the Lawrence Experiment Station, in Massachusetts, stated that when sewage is passed intermittently through a filter of coarse gravel from which all sand has been washed, ".. . each stone was kept covered with a fine film of liquid, very slowlymoving from stone to stone and continually in contact with air in the spaces between the stones. The liquid, starting at the top as sewage, reached the bottom within twenty-four hours with the organic matter nearly all burned out" (Mills 1890). Shortly after this report an English investigator, Scott-Moncrieff (Anonymous 1892) , experimenting with the treatment of sewage from his own home developed a filter plant using upward flow and demonstrated beyond any doubt the biological action as opposed to mechanical action alone. Although the early experiments in sewage treatment were conducted largely by engineers, representatives of other professions, such as bacteriologists, chemists, biochemists and biologists, began gradually to appear on the scene to contribute their share in the development of the methods of biological treatment in use today.
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