Specification of John Hanson : treating sewage.

  • Hanson, John.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Specification of John Hanson : treating sewage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Hanson’s Improvements in Treating Sewage. cities, causing pestilence and a high death rate, at the same time robbing the land of the best fertilizing properties. Many plans have been tried to clarify these waters and recover the manure in the form of residuum; however, most of these plans have failed, and those that have partially succeeded are too complicated, ponderous, and expensive. 5 Irrigation would seem the most natural, but such a town as Leeds or Bradford would require a Yorkshire for irrigation land. Precipitation then seems to me to be the only plan to be adopted, as it can be accom¬ plished in a comparatively small space. The precipitations hitherto tried have been the results of expensive 10 chemicals, which have to be manufactured, and as the value of an article is what it will fetch, the question arises to local boards and corporations what will be the price of these chemicals supposing all local boards and corporations were obliged to use them. Already the cost of precipitation with such chemicals at their present prices is some- 15 thing fabulous, and has caused large towns to look forward with dread to the time when an injunction will compel the clarifying of their sewage and foul rivers and streams. Chemistry so wonderful, and which is getting daily more developed, has dawned with a new light upon agriculture, and is destined to create 20 a revolution in the supply of food for plants and roots, &c. It seems strange that our country, so densely populated, should hitherto have been dependent on foreign countries for fertilizers and manures, such as bones, horns, hoofs, guano, and the like, when we have at home as waste and encumbrances the very ingredients the bones and other manure 25 materials possess, therefore instead of polluting our noble rivers and streams, destroying the fish and breeding pestilence in our towns, the contents of our sewers and drains must be transferred to the land, exalting the fertility of that which is now under culture and redeeming that which has hitherto been considered as hopelessly sterile. 30 When we reflect and search for the cause of rinderpest, foot and mouth disease, and other pestilential maladies, is it not natural to suppose that such pestilences have been conveyed here by or in the foreign products spoken of. We know not the state of health the animals were in before death, nor whether all the animals that supply 35 the bones, &c., have been slaughtered or have died a natural death. Our knowledge of the immense guano beds shew us clearly that millions of