Official report on the medical topography and climate of Calcutta : with brief notices of its prevalent diseases, endemic and epidemic / by James Ranald Martin.

Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Official report on the medical topography and climate of Calcutta : with brief notices of its prevalent diseases, endemic and epidemic / by James Ranald Martin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    highest is twenty-two feet, above the lake. Chowringhee, and a portion of the Esplanade, may be conveniently drained into Tolly’s Nullah. The most complete evidence on all that relates to levels, construc- tion of drains and sewers, &c., is now recorded on the Proceedings of Municipal Committee, already mentioned, and Government has only to order the “ necessary funds” indicated by Marquess Wellesley, and Calcutta will be as well drained as any city in the world. The great sewers should be of solid masonry, arched over ; they should also have lesser communicating sewers proceeding from each house, and their fall should be such as to admit of no arrest of their con- tents : such of the sewers as of necessity terminate in the river, should have their mouths at ordinary low water mark. Open sewers, or sur- face-drains should, where practicable, be made in the direction of the prevailing winds, and wide, so as to admit of exposure to the sun, and free ventilation. ON THE GENERAL SUPPLY OF WATER—THE TANKS. The natives do not seem any where impressed with the importance to health of a plentiful supply of pure water, and therefore it is that we every where find the tanks and wells in an impure and neglected con- dition, from the annual accumulations of vegetation going on at the bot- tom, so as to render them progressively shallow, until at length they become the half-dried, green and slimy puddles which so contaminate every portion of the native town. The tanks within the premises of the Baboos are universally in a neglected condition, and should be well looked to by the police. No person ought to have exclusive right or property in what is injurious to the public health. All half-dried tanks and wells should be filled up, and bathing, clothes washing, &c. only permitted in such as are unfit for other purposes. It is but a very few of the newer tanks that are kept in any thing like cleanly order ; and out of about 537 in and about town, by far the G Great sewers. The natives not aware of the impor- tance to health of a plentiful supply of pure water. The tanks attach- ed to the Baboos’ houses all bad. Half-dried tanks and wells to be filled up. Actual state of the water now in use amongst the poorer natives.