Bread, bakehouses, and bacteria : reprints of various papers / by F. J. Waldo and David Walsh.

  • Waldo, Frederick Joseph, 1852-
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bread, bakehouses, and bacteria : reprints of various papers / by F. J. Waldo and David Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    into a hot and stifling atmosphere. Pursuing his investiga- tions, he will find that the air is vitiated from many sources ; for instance, there is the active contamination of the flaring gas-jets, while the furnace fills the place with sulphurous fumes, more especially when the journeyman economizes fuel by closing the damper. The air is further charged with moisture and with other products derived directly from the baking of the bread. Sewer gas may enter through the drain openings in the floor, the more so as the grating traps are often worthless. It may enter, more- over, through a defective closet soil-pipe. Further pollution is caused by the ground air and damp which are sucked up into the heated cellar through the faulty flooring. But this is not all, for in low-lying districts there is the danger that in times of heavy rainfall the sewage may force its way through the drain-pipes into the bakehouse. It is easy to see that the introduction of a flood of sewage in this way may bring the germs of typhoid and other filth diseases into direct contact with the loaves of baked bread. Ventilation, in any real sense of the term, is absent, and, indeed under the circumstances we have pictured, is im- possible. An inlet grating usually exists at the level of the street, but as a rule it is kept carefully closed by the journeyman, who is morbidly susceptible to draughts. In most cases, again, there is another small inlet at the back of the cellar, but the second ventilator is almost invariably covered up by means of a sack. It will be seen therefore that not only is the air systematically poisoned from within, but also that no provision is made for that constant renewal from without which is essential to health. We may safely assert that no man could habitually work in an atmosphere even approaching that which has been portrayed without sooner or later sustaining serious injury to his health. Our description, however, has by no means exhausted