The Oxford medical adviser for the home / by John D. Comrie.

  • Comrie, John D. (John Dixon), 1875-1939.
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Oxford medical adviser for the home / by John D. Comrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    less than two gallons, delivered by a pipe at least 11- inches in diameter, and every closet should be provided with its own special flushing cistern, usually formed of iron, with siphonic action, and having an overflow pipe. Water-closets should be placed at some outer part of the building (not in some convenient recess in the centre of the house), against an ex¬ ternal wall, so that the soil-pipe may be led straight to the exterior. The room should be provided with a window opening right up to the ceil¬ ing, and should be well ventilated. Waste-pipes carrying off water from baths, sculleries, sinks, etc., must not be directly connected with the drain or soil-pipe, but should discharge into the open air upon a channel leading to a trapped grating at least 18 inches distant from the end of the waste-pipe. Soil-pipes, for carrying off sewage, should be fixed outside the house, and for the purpose of ventilation should be carried in their full width above the eaves, away from windows, and pro¬ tected by cowls or wires drawn across. Traps are contrivances which pre¬ vent the sewer air from gaining en¬ trance into the house from the drains, water being used for this purpose. The simplest form of trap is, therefore, simply a bend in the pipe which re¬ tains water. Drains are the pipes outside one house or building, which carry away as quickly as possible to the sewer the ordinary sewage of the building. They must, to prevent pollution of the sur¬ rounding soil, be made water-tight, and, except for ventilating purposes at special points, air-tight as well. Drain-pipes are usually, therefore, formed of glazed stoneware or cast- iron. They should be laid, if possible, in a straight line, on a foundation made firm by a layer of concrete. Each pipe should fit firmly into the next, special sockets being provided on the pipes for this purpose, and the joint should be made firm by cement. If there is any suspicion of drains 380 WATER SUPPLY having become blocked or leaky, or of traps being inefficient, they can be tested by the local public health authority on application to the medi¬ cal officer of health. WATER ON THE BRAIN is a popular name for hydrocephalus and for meningitis. (See Hydro¬ cephalus, Meningitis.) WATER SUPPLY. — In country districts the supply of water often has to be obtained from springs and wells. Spring water is frequently rendered clear and bright by the purification it undergoes in moving through the strata of the earth before it reaches its point of issue, this natural filtra¬ tion, if the water has penetrated far enough, being sufficient to remove completely the organic matter with which the water came in contact in the upper regions of the soil. As the water from springs may be contaminated at the point of issue, the spring should be walled in and provided with a discharging pipe that passes some distance below the sur¬ face, thus conducting the water to the surface. Wells consist of two main forms, shallow ' and ‘ deep ’. Shallow wells are apt to be polluted by sur¬ face water and drainage, but deep wells yield usually an excellent, palatable supply, and, in order to protect them from pollution by surface waters, they should be lined with bricks embedded in cement down to the depth of the imperme¬ able layer, and built up and closed in above the ground to prevent them from being contaminated at the surface. Upland waters form such good sources of supply, being removed largely from danger of contamina¬ tion by human excretions, that many of the principal towns in Great Britain now obtain their supplies in this manner. Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool, to mention three examples, have all tapped such