Discussion on the prevention of enteric fever / opened by George Vivian Poore and continued by W.T. Gairdner [and others].

  • Poore, George Vivian, 1843-1904.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Discussion on the prevention of enteric fever / opened by George Vivian Poore and continued by W.T. Gairdner [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    gardener calls good rich black mould.- Its fertility is unequalled. I must repeat what I have said, that the place of deposit must be well-tilled humus. If masses of faeces are dumped down on clay banks sloping to a river they may be washed into the river, and have been washed in many a time. Or they may be driven by torrential rain into deep cracks in the clay, and this has possibly happened in India and perhaps here also. Again I feel tempted to put forward a hypothetical case. It is this : as long as plants are alive their roots absorb moisture from the soil, but when they die the dead root of a tree or strong-rooted plant like the hop may possibly serve as a drain for the direct conduction of moisture to the subsoil. This is purely hypothetical, and I have no knowledge of any such occurrence. In a properly tilled humus there are no cracks or fissures, and any cracks must inevitably be filled up by the crumbly earth. The power of a well-tilled humus to absorb, transform, and humify organic matter is astounding; and, provided it be tilled and cropped, its power in this way seems to steadily increase, as if increase of appetite did grow by what it fed on.'' In my published works Essays on Eural Hygiene ' and ^ The Dwelling-house'') will be found details of experiments which show conclusively how great is the purifying power of humus on urine which is slowly filtered through it; and, in short, there is abundant evi- dence that a well-tilled and well-nourished humus is an absolute protection to our subterranean water-supplies. Further, I believe that, so long as the humus keeps healthy and in a highly productive state, the protection to our water-supplies is proportionate to the thickness and richness of the humus, or, in other words^ to the amount of dung applied to it. Further, I believe, and have supported the statement by arguments in the works referred to, that the best return agriculturally is got by the immediate and daily application of faeces to the land, and that while the fsecal