The production of diseases by sewer air / by A. Jacobi.

  • Jacobi, A. (Abraham), 1830-1919.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The production of diseases by sewer air / by A. Jacobi. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    isms and Febleisen’s coccus appear to be conveyed through house drains. At all events the opportunity for microbes to get out of the dwellings is greater than to get into them. When they get into the drains from inside, they are flushed out. It is evident, however, that the flushing out of substances entering the sinks from inside depends on the structure and size of the drain, the nature of the trap, and the amount of the water poured through it, also on the use or non-use of disinfectants employed in the households.f Less rainfall, and consequently less flushing of sewers, gives rise to accumulation of more filth. Badly con- structed brick sewers have the same result. Outfall sew- ers terminating below water are apt to be choked. Thus, while Russell’s analysis yielded a fair standard of purity of sewer air, Parent Duchatelet found only 13-79per cent, of oxygen and 2-99 per cent, of sulphureted hydrogen. Thus gas is undoubtedly developed to a great extent, bubbles are constantly breaking on the surface (Franklaud on * The epidemic of enteric fever in Croydon, 18Y5, was attributed by Buchanan to the entry of infected sewer air into houses through un- trapped drains and openings into the drains. The pipe sewers were of small size, six or nine inches in diameter, and were ventilated at dis- tances of a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty yards by petty openings which were blocked by charcoal trays. f The quantity of refuse from rooms and houses is very large in- deed. Pettenkofer calculates the daily amount of fames for the average person at 90 grammes, of urine 1,170 grammes; fora thousand persons per annum, fames, 34,000 kilogrammes ; urine, 428,000 litres. If you add to that figure 159 litres of water daily for each individual, the sum total of daily sewage for a thousand persons is 160,000 litres. That explains in part the wrath of Andrew Fergus, M. D. In the Proceed- inga of the Medico-Cliirurgical Society of Glasgow, of October 2, 1868, he broadly states that water-closets and canalization are opposed to revelation and Bible, that they are contrary to Nature, inasmuch as they rob the soil, are the sole cause of pollution of rivers, and fill the sewers with noxious gases which enter the houses in spite of traps.