The use of pure water.

Date:
[1853?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The use of pure water. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    laid down for the purpose. More than twenty mil- lions of gallons of pure water are made to stream through the Loudon houses, every day, by machinery provided for the purpose, besides probably half aa much more which is drawn from the pumps and wells. The consequence of all this is that London, with its greatly increased crowd of living beiugs, and with its much larger production of waste and dirt, is now never visited by ai|^ disease so dreadful as that old Plague. But since the plague never returns now to London, you think, perhaps, it is because the fearful disease has at length worn itself out, and not because London is better kept than it used to be. But how, then, will you account for this fact ? There are cities at the present time, in Egypt and in Turkey, which are just in the same filthy and miserable state that London was in, two centuries ago; and in these the plague stm breaks out almost every year, sweeping away hundreds of human beings at each visitation. As recently as the year 1852, a severe disease broke out in a small town close to the outskirts of London, where sixteen thousand people lived; in a very short time, two thousand out of the sixteen thousand be- came ill, and seventy persons died. A very clever doctor was sent down from London to find out what was the cause of this illness, and he soon discovered that the channels, which ought to have carried away the waste and decaying matters from this town, were choked up, and could not perform their ofiice. When water was coui'ed down into these channels,
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