Hints on drains, traps, closets, sewer gas, and sewage disposal / by P. Hinckes Bird.

  • Bird, P. Hinckes (Peter Hinckes), 1827-1891.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints on drains, traps, closets, sewer gas, and sewage disposal / by P. Hinckes Bird. 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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    Sanitary legislation resolves itself chiefly into the broad principle of attempting to provide clean air, clean water, clean food, clean soil, clean houses;—in furtherance of which Sani- tary Hints, general and special, on these points, have been freely distributed over the district. It is not to be understood, however, that any general attention to cleanhness, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, will secure entire immunity from the preventable diseases. The special kinds of cleanliness necessary to avoid the different fevers, for instance, are quite different from one another, and cannot be fully practised without an intimate knowledge of the way in which each disease is propagated. A quarter of a cen- tury ago, preventive medicine consisted in trying by quarantine to keep out disease; now it consists chiefly in removing the conditions favourable to its existence and spread. Pettenkofer forcibly compares the outbreak of cholera to explosions from gunpowder. The sparks which set fire to the powder are the germs of the disease, which we cannot keep out by the most rigid quarantine ; the powder is the combination of local circumstances in a town or city, without which the disease can- not get a foothold. He says that we act more wisely in searching out and removing the powder itself than in running after and trying to extinguish each individual spark before one of them drops on a powder heap and causes an explosion which blows us into the air with our extinguishers in our hands. We need not quote the opinion of various authorities on the effect of filth on health; that of Leibermeister (Zur Aetiologie des Typhus) seems to be gaining ground, that filth furnishes a favourable nidiis in which disease finds favourable conditions for rapid development; it is moreover proved that the removal of filth lowers death rates, and that the general intelligence of any community may be safely inferred from the attention which they pay to removing all filth—(one Hnk, at least, in the chain of disease which we can control)—completely away, beyond the possibihty of doing harm. There is always an intimate connection between du-t and disease ; the cleaner towns are kept the healthier they will necessarily become. The origin of typhoid fever is still under enquiry. Sir William Gull observes :—-' There is no scientific theory, but there is a good working theory on the point. The origination of the disease is somehow or other connected with drainage; it has, therefore, been called the filth fever. Hence to get rid of the filth is to got rid of the fever.' —(Dr. Hinckes- Bird. A Preliminarg Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Fvlde District, 1874.) J i>