Hints for health : being two lectures on the influence of air, water, food, and wine on the system / by J. Sherwood Stocker.

  • Stocker, John Sherwood.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints for health : being two lectures on the influence of air, water, food, and wine on the system / by J. Sherwood Stocker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    The extent of the sewers demonstrates both their utility and the enormous sums of money -which must have been spent on them—wo know from the testimony of Aquilius that the maintenance of the sewers cost the Censors more than twelve million sestertii, this in our own currency would prohably re- present a sum of £112,500, as the sestertius was of the value of 2jd. Some few years since, Mr. Chadwick informed the Commis- sioners of Sewers that he had recently received from Zurich a specimen of an earthenware pipe, such as is now recommended for the distribution of sewage; it had been laid down by the Eomans, and had worked under a pressure of 500 feet. The sewers are an immense work,*' wrote the elder Pliny. These excavations being made in the mountains, they would sail with their boats in Eome suspended as high as Thebes.— Agrippa caused to flow these seven torrents which, in their rapid course, hurry along all the refuse; swollen by rain, they beat against the bottom and the walls of the Cloacae, often driven inwards by the Tiber, the currents struggle with each other in the channel and yet the building exists—masses of water are between these walls without any part giving way:—Houses falling into ruins and destroyed by fire, and even earthquakes do their best against this vault; still the work of Tarquin remains impregnable. What surprises Pliny is more astonishing now, ten centuries later. Let us not omit a fact which has been passed over by some of our most celebrated Annalists. When Tarquin employed the people on these endless, dangerous and detested works, a number of labourers destroyed themselves, but as the Quirines fear above all things shame, the tyrant found a singular means of enforcing them to live, he had the corpses of those who committed suicide exposed upon crosses to the gaze of the vulgar, and the voracity of the birds of prey- once upon a time, thieves, [pickpockets, and other scandalous persons sought refuge at the sewers or channels at the edge of the river (Tiber). Titus, who edifies us as to the habits of these men, calls them Canalicoloe. In spite of his authority I should rather believe that our word Canaille comes from Cauis, rather than find its birth at the mouth of the Cloaca Maxima. ♦ Way's Rome; publishoa by Chapmau aud Hall, 1872.