A supplementary report on the results of a spiecal [sic] inquiry into the practice of interment in towns made at the request of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department / by Edwin Chadwick.

Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A supplementary report on the results of a spiecal [sic] inquiry into the practice of interment in towns made at the request of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department / by Edwin Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    air of the country ; for it is remarkable that miasms sometimes act with Ihe greatest intensity on those who habitually breathe the purest air. The miasms arising from church-yards are in general too much diluted by the surrounding air to strike the neighbouring inhabitants with sudden aiul severe disease, yet they may materially injure the health, and the evidence appears to me to be decisive that they often do so. Among others who sometimes obviously suffer from this cause, are the families of clergy- men, when, as occasionally happens, the vicarage or rectory is situated very close to a full church-yard. I myself know one such clergyman’s family, whose dwelling-house is so close to an extremely full churchyard, that a very disagreeable smell from the graves is always perceptible in some of the sitting and sleeping rooms. The mother of this family states that she has never had a day’s health since she has resided in this house, and that her children are always ailing; and their ill health is attributed, both by the family and their medical friends, to the offensive exhalations from the church-yard. Dr. Lyon Playfair states as follows in his communication— There are two kinds of changes which animal and vegelable matters undergo, when exposed to certain influences. These are known by the terms of “ decay ” and “ putrefaction.” Decay, properly so called, is a union of the elements of organic matter with the oxygen of the air; while putrefaction, although generally commencing with decay, is a change or transformation of the elements of the organic body itself, without any necessary union with the oxygen of the air. When decay proceeds in a body without putrefaction, offensive smells are not generated; but if the air in contact with the decaying matter be in any way deficient, the decay passes into putrefaction, and putrid smells arise. Putrid smells are rarely if ever evolved from substances destitute of the element nitrogen. Both decaying and putrefying matters are capable of communicating their own state of putrefaction or of decay to any organic matter with which they may come in contact. To take the simplest case, a piece of decayed wood, a decaying orange, or a piece of tainted flesh is capable of causing similar decay or putrefaction in another piece of wood, orange, or flesh. In a similar manner the decaying gases evolved from sewers occasion the putrescence of meat or of vegetables hung in the vicinity of the place from which they escape. But this communication of putrefaction is not confined to dead matter. When tainted meat or putrescent blood-puddings are taken as food, their state of putrefaction is frequently communicated to the bodies of the persons vvho have used them as food. A disease analogous to rot ensues, and generally terminates fatally. Happily this disease is little known'among us, but it is of very frequent occurrence in Germany. The decay or putrefaction communicated by putrid gases or by decaying matters does not always assume one form, but varies according to the organs to which their peculiar state is imparted. If communicated to the blood it might possibly happen that fever may arise; if to the intestines, dysentery or diarrhoea might result; and I think it might even be a ques- tion worthy of consideration, whether consumption may not arise from such exposure. Certainly it seems to do so among cattle. The men vvho are employed in cleaning out drains are very liable to the attacks of dysen- tery and of diarrhoea; and I recollect instances of similar diseases occur- ring among some fellow-students, when I attended the dissecting-rooms. The effects produced by decaying emanations will vary according to the state of putrefaction or decay in which these emanations are, as well as according to their intensity and concentration. Thus it occurs frequently that persons susceptible to contagion may be in the vicinity of a fever patient without acquiring the disease. I know one celebrated medical man who attends his own patients in fever without danger, but who has never been able to take charge of the fever-wards in an infirmary, from the cir-