On defences against epidemic visitations.

  • Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.
Date:
[1856?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On defences against epidemic visitations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    tiooB of typhas) aa identical witk those they hare dealt with at Malta and in the East as “ the plagne. In respect to the new works which the city has provided for itself, and set an example to all other cities of what they may do for them'Selves, having examined them, I can now state that, by the new system of what I call self-cleansing tabular drains and sewers, human fecal matter is no longer retained in cesspools, or in brick house drains, or in larger sewers of deposit, to stagnate and ferment, and give off foul emanations from beneath and amidst habitations, but is in a constant state of removal, and is removed before it can enter into advanced and noxious stages of decomposition. The excreta of the morning is received into the water with which every house is now provided. It is immediately removed in water. Before noon it is distributed in water. In its unfermented, and, as manure, ih its unwasted condition, it is for the most part—for this portion of the work is not quite so complete aa it might be—exercising its fertilising power over the water meadows below the town. The sewerage dis- charged from the old sewerage works of London and other cities into the sewers is putrid sewerage generally a year old, flushed out in annual cleanings or by occasional storms. The fresh sewerage con- stantly discharged from your new works may— sometimes within little more than a week—be converted into sweet - smelling grass, may be fed upon, and returned to the town as enriched milk. The putrid sewerage discharged from old large man - sized sewers of deposit killed Ashes. The fresh sewerage which is yet improperly permitted to escape from direct application to the land, feeds them and improves their quality. I am told that the largest trout—thirteen pounds weight —have been caught at the mouth of your new. out- fall sewer. By your new mechanical arrangements of universal water-closet apparatus and self-clean- ing house drains, and sewers in substitution of the ancient cesspools, yon have set a me- chanical example to the British metropolis, with its thousand miles of man-sized sewers of deposit, which are only extended cesspools, costing twenty thousand pounds per annum for intermittent cleans- ing j you set an example to the French metropolis, which stinks, and in summer time is rendered unin- habitable to those who can get away from the ema- nations from the accumulations retained within its mxKILD, FIIKTSB, LOKDOM’.