House-drainage, sewerage and sewage disposal in relation to health / by Louis C.Parkes.

  • Parkes, Louis Coltman, 1857-1942.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: House-drainage, sewerage and sewage disposal in relation to health / by Louis C.Parkes. 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.

    98/160 (page 86)
    sets of conduits—one for sewage and the other for storm waters. It is also, to say the least, doubtful whether it is a sound policy in the hygienic sense to treat the surface washings from the yards and enclosed areas around houses, and from public streets and carriage-ways, as if they con- sisted of unadulterated rain-water, and required no kind of treatment before discharge into a stream. Such surface washings are often polluted with human excretal matters, and contain the excretal refuse of such animals as horses, oxen, dogs, fowls, pigeons, and other domesticated crea- tures. The rain-water from the roofs of houses can, no doubt, generally be conveyed without offence direct to a stream; but as soon as the rain reaches the ground level in the neighbourhood of houses, it can no longer be regarded as uncontaminated. The polluting ingredients it then receives may be such as to cause danger to the public health in the event of the stream into which the rain-water drains discharge being used for potable purposes below the point of discharge. On these and other grounds, then, it is only perhaps under exceptional circumstances that the separate system of sewerage can be advantageously adopted for urban communities; although for isolated mansions or institu- tions, where the details of the scheme can be properly worked out, the exclusion of rain-water from the soil-drains generally offers very great advantages. From one point of view—that of subsequent purification of the sewage—a system of pipe sewers is in some respects less conducive to treatment at the outfall than a system of brick sewers. With pipe sewers in small towns the sewage arrives in a fresh condition at the sewage works, with the solids but little broken up and interspersed with the liquid. With brick sewers, however, owing to the