Conservancy or dry sanitation versus water carriage / by J. Donkin.

  • Donkin, J.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Conservancy or dry sanitation versus water carriage / by J. Donkin. 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.

    8/50 (page 6)
    This is the passage:—“ We have got rid of the visible filth, like that of the i8th century Edinburgh, but we have done it by establishing underfoot an'all-pervading circulation of deadly gases which pollute the air at every street corner, and which, in spite of all precautions, continually find their way into our houses, and lay a foundation for all sorts of diseases. By expending millions upon millions of money we have turned the earth into a very hotbed for breeding typhoid, diphtheria, and many other pestilences, and then, as a further advance, we set up what is called ‘ sanitation,’ which is mainly an attempt to save us from the fruits of our devices. We have cleaned the outside of the cup and the platter, but have made the inside so foul that it imperils our very lives to touch it. In towns our sewer system poisons the whole atmosphere. True, its vapours are diluted. We do not smell gaseous sewage in every breath we draw, any more than we taste liquid sewage in every drop we drink ; but there it is all the same. And we meet with it in a concentrated and unmistakable form dozens of times every day—sometimes at home, always abroad. Wherever a foot passenger has to wait at a crossing, there, by the wisdom with which we are governed, he finds a sewer grating to envelop him with reeking stench. Wherever there is a crack or a crann)^ in the pipes of his house, the same disgusting odour issues out and assails him. If he is a tenant he is in frequent misery through the necessity for removing stoppages and doing repairs; and if he is a landlord, half his income is thrown away in paying for them. And if, in either case, he complains, he is threatened with being called an enemy to progress. For this belief in progress, to its votaries, is a religion, and religions have to be taken as they stand, and swallowed whole. It is not permitted to pick and choose, to take this part and reject that. If, therefore.