Report on the mortality of cholera in England, 1848-49.

  • Farr, William, 1807-1883.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the mortality of cholera in England, 1848-49. 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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    Refuse. Air. Earth. Sites. and may be learnt with sufBcient accuracy from analyses of the waters of the salubrious fields. (lO.) Refuse. Water, vegetables, hay, grain, cattle, food of every kind, worth many thousands of pounds sterling, are brought from die country every week into ihe towns of the kingdom. The consumption of this matter by men and animals destroys a great part of its value: and the practice has been (i), to tiirow the refuse into the streets; (2), to deposit it in cesspools; (3), to wash it down the sewers into the rivers. The third is the modern practice in En->land ; and where the river water is not used, is, in low towns, the least evil. But it has these intolerable disadvantages: that the sewers invariably emit poisonous vapours, that the rivers are polluted, and that the organic mattf-r is thrown away. It becomes, then, a great question whether, by the use of ashes, peat charcoal, or some other stuff, a modification of the old system of nighlmen, mechanical arrangements, and the use of the railways and canals, the manure of the towns may not be returned to fertilize the fields of the country in the place of j;uano; for whicii it is found to be an adequate substitute.* (tl.) Air, noi stagnant—sweet, pure, and dry, rather than moist—is the healthiest; and is sometimes a preservative against pestilence on ground otherwise unfavourably placed and watered: but pure air and water are almost inseparable, and conversely so are impure air and impure water. Lancisi lays it down as a physiological axiom : ubi honce sunt aqux, ibi bomcs, ubi malce, malus iiidem est aer.'\ The air of Londcm and of many of the large towns of the island, is moist and foggy. The low situation of parts of the ground, and the vast extent of the evapo- rating surface of the rivers, often warmer than the air, are the causes of the excess of fog. No water should, therefore, be thrown artificially into the London atmosphere. Fountains in damp places are evils. Lakes lying between mountain ranges, beat by the impetuous winds, and traversed by rivers, as Lake Leman is by the Rhone, are beautiful and salubrious. The latter qualification, at least, must be refused to stagnant waters in low situations. It is true that a strong stream of fresh water, discharged through the lakes or ponds in the London jjarks, if they were made so shallow as not to require the intervention of the Humane Society, would keep the water sweet; but the moist London atmosphere requires drying; and might be very advantageously deprived of the damp supplies from the waters in Regent's Park, the Serpentine, and a considerable portion of the bed and muddy banks of the Thames. (12.) Eai tli. Il it is important that tra\ ellers, armies, and all moving bodies of men should avoid damp, low grounds, it is evidently of still greater importance that the habitations of a peo|de should be raised on dry, drained land of a certain elevation, washed by rains, and ventilated by the breezes of heaven. The .Mtcs of many English towns are unexceptionable ; they lie beautifully on the slopes of hills against the sun; the spires of their churches stand out against the sky. The sites of other cities and of parts of nearly all are, as we have seen, singularly bad, and should never have been selected for building. Sites of towns are as much a matter of public concern as lines of road, canals, or railways ; and legislation could npt be more advantageously employed than in directing and facilitating selection. The present law of settlement, and the mixed, complicated, uncertain tenure of land, interfere seriovisly with the choice of « One of the most tlistiiigiiisheil Pliysiolngists of tlie day, insiiired, proliably, hy the grand simplicity of the mechanical anaiigenients of tlie hiimiui body, lias sketched the project of a circuit railway and cloaca within ihe borders of the Thames, by which •'liie same railways wliich bring cattle and corn from our fields, should he made to restore them in tlieir changed form of manure. ' It is impossible that the travelliuij and the traffic of London can long be carried on through the streets, which are obstructed by waggons and slow omnibuses, 'the completion of the outer railway circuit, which now runs from Clialk'^Farm to Clackwall, with the erection of tlie second proposed circuit roinid the embanked Thames, and a due number of anastomosing branches—would provide a free circulation of passengers anil goods all over London; while the night trains would alTord facilities for collecting and re-distribuliiig every kind of refuse over the country. It is relatively less difficult (tliat is, less expensive to each individual) to provision or to execute public works for a vast metropolis of two and a half niillioiis of jieople, organized municipally, than it is to perform the same offices for smaller towns. But ordinary professional minds, occupied with details, shrink at the magnitude of combined operations which they have iiever contem- plated on the grand scale ; and it is from without tlial they often receive their mission and inspiration. f De Nat. Rom. coel. qualit, c. vi.