  To avoid overloading the text, I have thrown into the form of an Appendix several Notes more or less intimately connected with the great question considered in the body of the work. They may be read with or without any reference to the various headings they treat of. Note 1. By the deodorizing processes now in use, the ammonia, the most valuable constituent of manures, is destroyed; whilst by the flushing of sewers with an excessive quantity of water it is dissipated; hence the low value, or rather the absolute inutility of the sewage of large towns, as manure, when diluted with the surface drainage and other waters, excepting in the case of reclaiming waste lands, in order to convert them into meadows of so highly objectionable a character that no one can or will reside near them. The smell from such meadows is most abominable. Even in such cases an outfall must be provided for the surplus sewage waters, either into a river or into the sea, for the meadows to be irrigated require but little of it, and that only occasionally and during droughts. The fixing the ammonia is the great difficulty the agriculturist experiences in all questions respecting those manures which naturally contain or produce it. Its volatility is so great that it not only readily escapes into the air, but carries along with it, especially from waters, bodies at the moment in a state of slow combustion; or, in other words, ferments, capable of exciting fermentation in other fermentable bodies. It may even pass into the condition of caustic ammonia.73 In a well written pamphlet by Mr. Ward,74 the unhappy and fatal mistake of mixing the surface drainage with the sewage of London is clearly pointed out for the hundredth time, but the parties who planned the scheme will no more take notice of such facts than they did fifteen or twenty years ago, when they commenced their work of polluting the Thames and other rivers. To Mr. Ward’s proposal of purifying the river and fertilizing the land by tubular drainage, there are, however, many serious objections. Note 2.—Habits of the WILDE, in desert or uninhabited countries. It is known to sportsmen that in the neighbourhood of hills, partridges leave the low grounds at the approach of evening, and take themselves to the hilly or more elevated district. Nature has taught them a very curious fact in meteorology, namely, that on leaving the valley at night, and ascending the hill, the temperature of the air increases up to a certain elevation, and from that point upwards decreases. The game ascends to the point of highest temperature, and there remains for the evening. A friend informs me that whilst crossing the high range of mountains forming the watershed between the Grotevisch RiviÈre and the Zondag RiviÈre, in Southern Africa, he experienced as he ascended intense cold, with heavy dews in the valleys through which ran the sources of the Grotevisch RiviÈre, and these continued until he reached the base of the crowning heights. Here the party slept in a mud-hut belonging to a Dutch boer. During the ascent they saw no game; but on climbing about half way up the remaining steep before daybreak next morning, they reached a spot where all the large game had congregated. It was the point of greatest warmth, generally a few hundred feet above the plain, and below the summit of the mountain. From this point to the summit the cold was most intense, and snow lay on the high peaks of the mountains. When the shells of infusoria are driven about in the atmosphere they lose their carbonate of lime by the acid fermentation; and the membranous portions having the properties of coagulated Note 3.—Moss. In the Annales de Chimie, volume xxix. p.225, mention is made that the walls of various towns which had been under water for several years having become exposed, from the effects of a dry summer and hot weather, became covered with vegetable matter, the decomposition of which infected the atmosphere, and caused great sickness in the environs, and particularly where buildings were situated in marshes in communication with the sea. The vegetation, in fact, was composed of lichens. On a recent visit to Bangor, in North Wales, I was struck with the nice firm turf which was in the garden; and upon inquiring of the gardener, he informed me that the turf came from the seeds blown from the hills, and that it required great care on the part of the farmers to keep it under, or it would be exceedingly injurious to land and buildings if neglected. When it grows on walls it splits them by the capillary expansion of its roots between the bricks operated upon by damp hot weather. I have seen this lichen destroy the pillars of a gateway three feet thick. Mill-stones are made in Germany out of granite, by means of willow pegs being driven into holes thinly covered with water; this causes the willow to act by capillary expansion, forcing the mill-stones of the required size out of the rock. It is of the utmost importance that the nature of moss and lichen generally should be well studied before constructing sewers, &c., where vegetable matter exists near water. Was it by similar means that the ancient Egyptians and inhabitants of Arabia PetrÆa cut from the solid rock those vast blocks, in effecting which they do not seem to have availed themselves of any modern mechanical contrivances? The ferment, that is, the substances in a state of fermentation and capable of acting on all fermentable bodies, and especially on complex organic compounds, as the blood, exist at all times in the air, but are as a matter of course greatly influenced by a variety of circumstances as regards their effects on man and other animals. It is proved by indubitable evidence that this morbific matter is as capable of entering the system when minute particles of it are diffused in the atmosphere as when it is directly introduced into the blood vessels by a wound. When diffused in the air, these noxious particles are conveyed into the system through the thin and delicate walls of the air-vesicles of the lungs in the act of respiration. The mode in which the air-vesicles are formed and disposed is such as to give to the human lungs an almost incredible extent of absorbing surface, while at every point of this surface there is a vascular tube ready to receive any substance imbibed by it and to carry it at once into the current of the circulation. Thus in certain seasons boils and carbuncles prevail to an alarming extent, and surgeons dare not operate lest they should lose their patients from erysipelas and inflammations, running rapidly into putrescence. In large hospitals the poisonous air in all probability is constantly present, attacking those who have been previously weakened by disease or wounds, or loss of blood; in other words, all those in whom from any circumstance (as by the depression of the vital powers) the complex organic compounds are held loosely together, and are therefore prepared to ferment or to fall into putrescence. Note 4.—Anther. This name is given in botany to the summit or top of the stamen containing the fertilizing fruit-producing dust. Pollen is the fecundating dust or fine substance, like flour, meal, or fine bran. Farina, contained in the anther of flowers and plants, which is dispersed on their stigma for impregnation, form a vegetable essence constituting the particular nature of a substance forming the flower existing in other plants of the same family or kind. Spore or sporule in botany is that product of flowerless plants which performs the function of seeds. These substances float in the atmosphere, and are the cause of Should seeds fly about with the pollen or farina in a state of decay and full of carbonic acid, the oxygen of the atmosphere, so essential to human beings, is diminished, and the pollen or seeds are inhaled into the lungs, and are thus exposed to the action of oxygen whilst circulating with the blood. The result of an excess of carbon in the air is the growth of ferns on barren rocks, which ferns subsequently become coal. The same cause will always produce the same results. When vegetable matters rise from a large surface of earth or mud (as from the newly-drained forty thousand acres of the lake of Haarlem), there are no plants there to inhale the carbonic acid, and to give out oxygen; but those seeds being rotten or in a state of ferment, the oxygen for the decomposition is drawn from the atmosphere alone, and human beings who breathe this malaria have fever; the atmosphere is tainted: miasms of carbon with hydrogen gas (the lightest thing known) fly about, carrying them to points where sulphurous gases may find them a resting-place on mud and shallow waters: these give rise to fever, cholera, plague, and to all zymotic diseases. Note 5.—AlgÆ, or Sea-weeds of the Mediterranean Sea. These were examined by Doctor Derbes, Professor of Sciences, and Captain Solier, of Marseilles, and the result of their researches was published in the supplement of the Comtes Rendus of the AcadÉmie des Sciences, in answer to a prize essay proposed by the Academy in 1847. Nothing can exceed the botanical truthfulness of the memoir presented by these gentlemen to the Academy. After a careful examination of the substances resulting from the mass of decayed sea-weed in the delta of the various rivers which flow into the Mediterranean Sea, they arrived at the conclusion that the product is the cause of fevers, by generating a malaria which the vital powers are unequal to meet. Thus the cholera existed at Marseilles in 1850; all knowledge of the extent of its destructive ravages was withheld from the public; and the truth of this is in some measure proved by the readiness with which the Board of Health recommend the quarantine of ten to Note 6.—The Marseilles Board of Health and Quarantine. TO THE EDITOR OF THE “TIMES.” Challice. Sir,—The Board of Health of Marseilles are about to establish quarantine regulations of ten days’ and fifteen days’ duration at that port, because “a dreadful plague rages at Bengazzi, in Tripoli, and is extending along the coast to Alexandria.” Individuals are to be confined ten days, and in certain cases fifteen days. Letters are to be purified, &c., and some 1500 Piedmontese labourers are likely to be disturbed and thrown out of work if the proposed quarantine regulations are established. And so this is the sum total of sanitary experience for the last ten years! The French authorities saw all quarantine regulations broken down during the Crimean war; in fact, joined the British in abolishing a quarantine at Smyrna, at Galipoli, at Constantinople, at Sinope, at Samsoon, at Trebizonde, at Malta, and even at Marseilles, and indeed at all other ports and places used by the transports and by the armies in alliance. The armies certainly did not escape fever and cholera in their most terrible forms. The French, the British, and the Sardinians alike suffered, both in the field and in hospital, at the commencement. The British alone, however, by means of sanitary works and regulations, reduced cholera attacks to a minimum, and almost abolished fever. A few simple alterations to the sewers from the great hospitals on the Bosphorus and other places; ventilation—in many instances by simply breaking the top squares of windows; regular scavenging without and cleansing within the works of the hospitals, and the regular use of the lime-wash brush, emptied the hospital wards of fever patients. Surface cleansing at Balaklava, and regular scavenging both the shores and water of the harbour; covering the shallow graves with gravel and earth; scavenging the camp, and daily disinfecting all latrines, soon reduced the British army mortality below home or barrack life and service. The French neglected these things, or blundered in their execution, as the 5000 deaths per month in the hospitals on the Bosphorus, from hospital and camp fever alone, during the last Civil Engineer. August 14, 1858. Note 7.—Mud, Water, and Air. The presence of water and a suitable temperature are indispensable conditions of the oxidizing process of decay, just as they are necessary to putrefaction and fermentation. The sides of ponds and ditches being covered by water during the winter months, in the spring the air becoming warmer and drier, the water diminishes, the decay of vegetable seeds, plants, and all woody fibres enter now into putrefaction, communicating the process to each other, and by the transmission of decomposition from one particle to another, a great number of plants give out various gases to the atmosphere while decaying upon mud, rise into the air, meeting other gases, and then, floating Note 8. I have known fevers cured by a change of the sleeping room from the south to the north aspect, and still more readily by removing from one side of the street to the other. All should avoid dwelling near canals, ponds, or ditches habitually covered with a white froth; this is formed, in fact, of gases rising through humus swimming on the water, and contains living beings as well as fermentable substances. It is important to men who work and sleep in the same house to have the day or working-rooms to the north, where the sun never enters, and to sleep in a room to the east or south. A room to the west, looking to the west, is not healthy, particularly in summer months, being the hottest in the evening. Gnats, moths, and flies collect there, and are at least harassing, if not hurtful, particularly to infants. No person not a native of a marshy country should travel overland in the evening; dew causes a strong action in vapours, mists, &c. Invalids and soldiers after fatigue, should halt in the daytime, and march in the evening, to avoid being chilled. Note 9. 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Paris. 1806. 2 Medical authors of the highest repute are exceedingly vague in their ideas respecting the nature of malaria; nor will it ever be otherwise until the question be taken up by the strictly scientific. Thus, Sir John Forbes says, in his “Holiday:”—“As the unknown thing which we term malaria or miasma of marshes, under certain circumstances gives rise at one time to simple ague, at another to a fatal remittent fever, &c.; and produces at times a morbid enlargement of the spleen, at others diseases of the liver, &c.; so I can imagine that some other malaria, or unknown thing or influence of local origin, may be the cause of ordinary bronchocele, of goitre of the Alps, and also of cretinism.” From the 1st of August to December the author hunted and waded through the marshes of Belgium and Holland in quest of water-fowl; his impunity from fever may be in part ascribed to a hardy training in early life. 3 Typhus, now subdivided into two—namely, the true typhus and typhoid fever. 4 Quetelet, “Sur l’Homme.” 5 The late Dr. Macculloch was a distinguished geologist in the employment of Government, representing in himself the department which has now swelled out into the Metropolitan School of Practical Geology, the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn-street, the geological department in connexion with the Ordnance, &c. &c. He resided mostly in London, and moved in the best circles. Though a strictly scientific man, he was a professor also of the conjectural art, having been educated as a medical man. Soon after publishing his first essays on malaria, thrown out as feelers to the profession and the public, he had his misgivings as to the safety of the course he was pursuing. To denounce open sewers, undrained streets, untrapped cesspools, and overflowing dead-wells, was clearly an attack on the proprietors of London houses; and he called one morning in great haste on a distinguished barrister, to consult him as to the possibility of a passage in one of his essays being construed into a ground for an action for libel! How changed now are the views of society in respect of all such matters. 6 See the admirable speech of Mr. Disraeli in his place in Parliament, on the condition of the Thames. 7 It is right to observe that the unpleasant odour from the Thames, which during the month of June and part of July of the present year so disturbed the olfactory nerves of the Londoners, ceased at once so soon as the Bill for the purification of the Thames passed both Houses of Parliament. What connexion this had with the causes of the odour, and how these odours were so opportunely called forth and so quietly dismissed, I leave to be conjectured by the thoughtful of all classes. At this moment—August, 1858—during the most intense heat, the river is as sweet and fresh as a mountain stream, and has continued so ever since. Some are disposed to ascribe the cessation of the odours (for the stream is not in any way purified) to the throwing of quick-lime into the lower sections of the principal sewers; but if a remedy so simple as this was to be found in such a process, why was it not employed in June and July? It is only the unobserving who are surprised at such things, and who have not happened to observe what follows the spreading of an ancient cesspool over the fields by the road-side, or pouring its contents into a comparatively small river. The Thames is a comparatively small river, and the effects of pouring into it, at a convenient and suitable time (the dog-days, Parliament sitting, &c.), the contents of half-a-dozen cesspools of fifty years’ standing, undiluted and at once, would most assuredly give rise to results such as took place in London in June and July. The plot was a very nasty one—it might easily have been traced and the plotters detected: the sewer-makers, under the direction, no doubt, of the various boards, were very active in various quarters; and, not to mention other places, the main street of Hackney, for instance, for nearly a whole day, was by such means rendered quite unbearable. 8 The Walcheren expedition. 9 Rapid changes in the barometric pressure of the atmosphere strongly affect some persons, but the malaise caused does not seem to be of a permanent character. In the spring, in Britain, when north-easterly winds prevail, the amount of skin disease, rheumatism, neuralgia, &c., is sufficiently remarkable, and the blights they cause in plants is a fact known to all. In a work published by Mulder (“Water en Miht,” Amsterdam, p.181), we find it mentioned that Van Swinden investigated the mutations of atmospheric pressure as a cause of sickness, and arrived at the conclusion that a low pressure was not the cause of sickness and fever. He remarked that although there had been many years in which much sickness prevailed, seemingly connected with hot and dry weather, the barometer had varied but little. Thus, at Haarlem, in the period between 1755 and 1780, the maximum was 30·9, the minimum or lowest, 28·0. The summer of 1779 was extremely hot, and a fever epidemic appeared which continued for three years. It was ascribed to the draining of several polders. Several learned societies made reports on the subject of this fever, but they elicited no new facts. It was generally agreed that the deeper the mud and turf containing vegetable matter were under water, the less was the sickness resulting from the draining. A Mynheer Driessen called public attention to the circumstance that on the coasts of Holland there were many places where animal and vegetable matter had accumulated and was in a state of rottenness or fermentation; and in this state he suggested that being carried inland by strong westerly winds, it might give rise to sickness. It is remarkable, however, that both the influenza and cholera progressed against the prevailing westerly winds. 10 Men in a state of nature seem to resist malaria. Thus the natives of Newfoundland and of Canada generally, and indeed of all America, withstood readily the malaria of their native land, but perished when brought within the influence of European domesticity. We must allow, however, for the power of race. On the other hand, it seems almost certain that the old Roman armies withstood the influence of climate much more effectually than modern armies do. They lived generally in camps, which they themselves fortified. Of their sanitary regulations we know nothing, but of their camps we know that no English or French soldiers could possibly stand their ground for any length of time similarly encamped. A legion (about 12,000 men) encamped on a space of 700 yards square; what became of the refuse of the camp, and how was it disposed of? No Crimean disasters ever happened to CÆsar; he could not afford to lose his veteran Legions as we lost the Guards. 11 Gibbon, vol.vii., p.421, Milman’s edition. 12 The cholera, in so far as I know, has not as yet penetrated beyond the tropic into the southern hemisphere. 13 In the Times of to-day (September 8th), the contagious character of the plague is stoutly denied by one who seems to write from authority, or who at least is evidently well backed by a strong party. The writer is evidently one of the Commissioners who met in Paris some years ago to inquire into the working of the quarantine laws. I offer no opinion on the subject,—though “one-idea” men, they have a show of truth on their side, and especially in this, that they adopt the popular view of the subject when they deny the contagious nature of the plague. They boldly affirm that plague only spreads in places where sanitary regulations are despised—a consoling and useful theory, even if it were not true. They made the same assertions of cholera—their hypothesis proved sadly at fault. The pump-well water-drinking theory is the latest expression of medical theorists in respect of the origin of the cholera: there never was a greater delusion. It does not merit a refutation, and is quite unworthy the professors of even a conjectural art. That the symptoms of cholera strongly resemble the action of a violent poison taken into the stomach, is not to be questioned, and that water may have been the vehicle of such a poison is neither impossible nor even improbable. The iced-water drinking population of Paris, of Palermo, and of many Sicilian and Italian towns, suffered terribly from cholera. Nor does it spare the temperate Mahometan, upon whom cleanliness is enjoined as an article of his faith. Still, the wholly inexplicable facts in the spread of cholera (and the same may be said of plague, typhus, and yellow fever) are far too numerous to admit of any generalization. Whilst the cholera spared Birmingham—at the time neither properly drained nor sewered, it nearly depopulated Bilston, a healthy town situated only a few miles from Birmingham, hundreds in the meantime travelling between the two places every hour of the day. It swept off the inhabitants of one side of a street in Deptford, leaving those on the other side unscathed. All drank of the same waters. The theory merits no attention. 14 It raged most severely in Scotland, in the remarkably healthy village of Prestonpans and Fisher-row; in the highest and healthiest parts of Edinburgh; amongst the peasantry and miners scattered over the high grounds of Midlothian, belonging to the Marquis of Lothian. These people lived comfortably in detached cottages amongst the fields. 15 This question, in so far as regards a military life, has been handled in a masterly manner by Major Tulloch. 16 In the expedition to St. Domingo, the English army forming the expedition landed 10,000 strong; they withdrew in five weeks, without striking a blow or seeing an enemy. Their numbers were reduced to 1100. See “History of the Expedition to St. Domingo,” by Dr. Maclean. 17 Persius, Sat. Napoleon expressed the same idea when he said, “The stomach governs Europe.” 18 It has been asserted on good authority, and not contradicted, that the “Natural Theology” of the celebrated Paley is a mere translation of a Dutch work. 19 This principle, so fertile in ideas, will one day, no doubt, be fully elaborated and studied to its results. These living beings may prove to be the syphons of perfume and the messengers of colour. 21 “Statistical Report on the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding among the Troops in the West Indies.” Prepared from the Records of the Army Medical Department and War-Office Returns. London, 1838. It has been objected to these Reports that they embrace only one class of lives. But this does not diminish their value, for the lives they report on are presumed to be the selected lives of men in the prime of life. 22 The army of England is, and perhaps has at all times been, an aggressive army, maintained to intimidate foreign races and nations. It resembles in many of its main features the army of ancient Carthage. 23 Report: Section, Mediterranean. 24 It may be asked, Why not inquire into the statistics of fever in Essex? The truth is, that no such exist. The conjectures and recollections of civil practitioners are valueless. 25 As by the Registrar-General: see his Reports. 26 The ancient Egyptians seem to me to have long ago settled this question, practically. On the subsidence of the Nile they, without a day’s delay, commenced agricultural operations; nothing was allowed to fall into rottenness or putrefaction. 27 Liebig. 28 Liebig: Letters on Chemistry. 29 Report, p.176. 30 Liebig, 1851. 31 TraitÉ de Chimie Organique. Par M.J. Liebig. pp.88. 32 Liebig, loc. cit. 33 The “Sunderland Times” gives publicity to the following frightful narrative, drawn up by Captain Edward Robinson, of Sunderland, commander of the ship Raleigh, of South Shields:—“I arrived at this place in the beginning of May, 1858, being sent to bring home a vessel whose captain died of yellow fever; little did I think, before leaving home, that I should have witnessed the sufferings of so many of my fellow-creatures that were ill of this dreadful epidemic. I was told it would be all over before I arrived, but I found that, so far from that being the case, its ravages were unmitigated. In the street that I lodged in, five in one family were buried from the house in one day. The Rio journals were publishing in their columns, ‘No cases of yellow fever to-day.’ One ship at the port had seven captains dead before she could be brought out of the place. The vessel—the Raleigh of South Shields—that I have come home in command of, had her captain, chief officer, second officer, and four of her crew stricken down by the disease. On the day before the Captain died I visited him at the hospital; I there witnessed such sights as I hope never again to see—poor sailors in the height of the fearful malady, with the black vomit, vomiting dark fluid like coffee. I shall never forget the looks they gave me, and how their poor dull eyes brightened as I gave them a word of comfort, and told them they would get better. Next day, when I returned to see them, I found the whole gone—the captain and six of his crew, all dead and buried. Still, ‘No cases of fever,’ say the Rio journals. The number carried off by yellow fever from February to May, 1858, amounted to 1609, upwards of 600 of the deaths being among English sailors. The presence of a plague fever is not to be wondered at, the state of the town being a disgrace to civilized people. All manner of filth is to be met with in most parts of the town. Dead animals and filth I cannot describe meet your eye and offend your senses almost everywhere. “My brother, now sixty-eight years of age, and who has been thirty-six years at Rio, informs me that he has often seen Europeans on ’Change in the morning, who died and were buried on the same evening. He has seen Rio cleared five times of Europeans. The pestilence, he believes, comes from the flat marshy land near Rio. The natives burn tar-barrels to purify the atmosphere.” 34 Deuteronomy xxii. 12. 35 The Registrar-General consoles the inhabitants of London on the relative amount of injury, being in favour of the plan of polluting the Thames rather than of gradually abolishing cesspools. 36 “Letters on Chemistry.” By Justus von Liebig. London, 1857. 37 Liebig, p.384. 38 The guano of sea-birds when exposed to rain is of no value. 39 Liebig. 40 Henle, “Untersuchungen,” p.52; also p.57. 41 The expression of Lord Raglan when he demanded from England veteran troops, and not lads of immature age, to be sent to the seat of war. 42 Reign of Charles the Second. 43 He is, I believe, a physician and an M.D. 44 Quetelet. 45 Cholera has not, as yet, passed into the southern hemisphere beyond the tropical line. 46 “The town of Port Antonio is situated at the north-eastern extremity of the island, eighty miles from Kingston, and lies in a hollow surrounded by an amphitheatre of thickly-wooded hills. Fort George, in which are the barracks for the troops, is built at the extremity of a peninsula, nearly surrounded by the sea; and though possessing no great elevation, it has, from its position, a tolerably free exposure to the breeze. On each side of the peninsula are two harbours for the shipping; that on the east side enjoys a comparatively healthy locality, but that on the west is sheltered by a thickly-wooded hill, which impedes ventilation; and there is a considerable space of level ground, generally inundated by the tide, which at low water is left in a marshy state, and when acted on by the sun emits exhalations said to be both offensive and unhealthy. “The barracks stand about twenty yards from the sea, on a piece of ground of coralline formation, and consist of a building of two stories, elevated on brick pillars. The hospital is built on a higher situation, and raised on arches about seven feet. It contains three wards for the patients, and has a shaded walk attached to it for convalescents. Water is supplied to the troops, by contract, from a river a quarter of a mile distant. “There seems to have been no troops at this station in 1825 and 1826, but the mortality during the other years embraced in the Report has been as under:
* 127 men were here for one quarter of a year only, which is equivalent to 32 for a whole year. “Thus the local circumstances remaining the same, the mortality from fever yet varies exceedingly. It is the same with the typhus of temperate countries, showing that in addition to malaria, presumed to be ever present, a something more is required, that we must look for in the constitution of the atmosphere.” 47 I am free to admit, with Liebig, that the lungs are the seat of the most rapid and powerful chemical action (p.151), yet some distinguished physiologists think that the external integuments may become the seat of disease, and give origin to dangerous affections by mere stoppage of their secretions and excretions. Certain of these are held to be poisonous and highly irritating, and cholera itself has been ascribed to the sudden transfer of the tegumentary secretions into the general torrent of the blood. This seems to have been the opinion of the celebrated anatomist and physiologist, De Blainville. 48 Citrates, tartrates, acetates. 49 Eremacaasie: Liebig. 50 All constitutions are not equally liable to be affected by morbid poisons. This has been proved as regards dissecting-room wounds; and as regards typhus, cholera, plague, ague, &c., the matter admits of no doubt. 51 Blood has a mordant given to it which dyes it red; when this is in excess, the blood becomes black, or very dark. This was the colour of the blood in cholera. Its crasis seemed to be broken down, and I have it on sure anatomical testimony, that in dissecting those who had died of cholera, the larger veins, when once opened, continued to pour out blood for many days. 52 The various plans for the deodorization of cesspools, water-closets, dead-wells, sewers, &c., were first introduced into England from France and Belgium. Under French management Paris is sweet, and proverbially clean and pleasant; London, under the management of parties without individual responsibility, notoriously filthy and full of bad odours. Under certain circumstances, and especially when limited to small quantities of the matter to be deodorized, they are successful enough in destroying the unpleasant odour, but in the experiments made a few years ago on the comparative merits of various kinds of deodorants, it was obvious that no real dependence could be placed on them, unless the cesspool was at the same time flushed or cleansed out with a very strong flow of pure water poured in along with the deodorant. In how far the various deodorants recommended are at the same time disinfectants, has never yet been shown. The excreta deodorized have hitherto proved of but small commercial value, farmers very generally declining their use. It is singular that the same guano (human) which is said to be so valuable in China, should prove a failure in Europe, and especially in England, showing how much still remains to be discovered in practical agriculture. If human guano really be of such value in China as has been reported, might it not be worth while to import into Britain a few Chinese agricultural labourers and gardeners thoroughly acquainted with the agriculture of their country, and from whom might be learned the art of preparing the manure? Capitalists have engaged in many less promising speculations than this. From whatever source the Chinese derived their knowledge of the domestic and fine arts they now possess (for it is impossible to imagine that they invented them), one thing is certain—that they were recording eclipses, printing books, building temples, raising crops equal to the support of a vast population, whilst the great nations of Western Europe were wandering about in their native woods, clothed in the skins of animals, ignorant even of agriculture, and barbarous to the last degree. Nor was the knowledge and taste of the Chinese confined, in the matter of agriculture and horticulture, to the merely useful, as is obvious by a passage in Humboldt’s “Kosmos,” wherein the illustrious savant proves that the ancient Chinese, in respect of taste in horticulture, and in the composition of park scenery, excelled all the world. 53 Ozone is said to oxidize the poison. It destroys sulphuretted hydrogen and all oxydable miasms, and is the most powerful disinfecting agent, but is itself unfit for respiration: it causes suffocation. Air in its normal state contains one ten-thousandth part of ozone; when raised to one two-thousandth part it is sufficient to kill small animals. 54 Hydrogen, or inflammable air, is the lightest known substance; its specific gravity is to that of air as 732 to 1000. The gases, into the composition of which it enters, rising from these ditches and banks of mud carry with them dried humus, and even animal matter in a state of putrefaction, which, being dry or moist, may act as strongly as variola itself, in respect of its injurious effects on man, who breathes it either as it rises from ditches, or is driven by currents of air circulating round watery places covered with humus. It is even (onctueux) so strong that it will sustain seeds and dust upon water, as I have witnessed at Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Verona, Bologna, Venice, and even in the canals of Lambeth and Deptford. By means of hydrogen we raise a balloon; can we not imagine it to be equal to the raising up of humus? It is generally supposed that sulphuretted hydrogen is amongst the dangerous miasms, but it cannot be so hurtful, for no boat can go into canals without disturbing it, and yet we see no evil results from this; but if the water-level lowers, and leaves vegetable or animal matter upon mud in a state of slow combustion, then it is that fevers commence—a fact, I think, I have proved by an appeal to the history of pestilences in ancient and modern times. 55 “Decline and Fall,” vol.iii. p.391, Milman’s edition. 56 The idea of employing the drainage of towns, partaking under all circumstances more or less of the nature of sewage—using the term in its most extensive sense, as comprising the excreta of the entire population—seems first to have originated in Scotland, and especially in the vicinity of the capital. The period is perhaps not well known, but about the commencement of the present century we find the system in full force, but limited to the great outlets of the drainage and soiled water of the town. These great drains were not strictly speaking sewers, but drains, for at that time there were but few sewers, properly so called. If cesspools existed, they were not emptied into the drains, or so-called town-sewers, so that the matters contained in the two great outlets used for the purposes of foul-water irrigation bore little or no resemblance to the turbid, frightful, and most putrescent mass now conveyed into the Thames by the sewers of London. This essential distinction in the quality of the material has been ignored or passed over in the Reports of the Board of Health. Not that the irrigating water was to be considered as pure; on the contrary, it was extremely filthy; but it did not at that time contain the sewage of the town, properly speaking. It probably now does so in consequence of the extension of the system of water-closets, latrines, &c. The Scotch agriculturists who employed the water of these vast foul drains, would have much preferred pure water, but they had it not at their command. With this, such as it was, they irrigated certain tracts of land, some of which were originally barren wastes, converting them into meadows on which grew a peculiar kind of grass, which cattle (milch cows) do not reject after having been accustomed to its use. But the farmers knew well that the abominable liquid they thus poured over their fields was wholly unfit for the usual agricultural purposes; and thus in no instance did they employ it as manure. The Grange drain was used by one market-gardener only, simply for the purposes of irrigation during droughts, but not with any view to the manuring of the garden. By the time that all the cesspools of London have been poured into the drains, and the system of drainage and sewage completed and formed into one system, there arises the question as to how the material is to be disposed of? The pouring it into the Thames at a point below the influence of the tide is perhaps, after all, the easiest and least expensive mode of escaping from the dilemma into which the capital has been brought by the clumsy experiments of the late Board of Health; but what the ultimate result of this additional experiment may be, no one can foretel. If transmitted to the fields, the farmers are sure to reject it as manure; but it might be conveyed to barren waste lands, mere sandy wastes, the qualities of which no doubt in time it would beneficially affect, converting them first into meadows, and possibly afterwards into land favourable for the growth of certain green crops. The liquid might also be conveyed to estuaries which it might be desirable to fill up, and the numerous small tidal harbours which the extension of railways will speedily render of little or no value to the inhabitants. The mud deposited in tidal harbours or on the banks of rivers within the influence of the tide is of no value as a manure; when spread over the fields, the result is the loss of the crops for some years. 57 Gibbon. 58 Niebuhr. 59 Extremique hominum, Morini Rhenusque bicornis. Æneid viii. 60 “Ab urbe condita;” from the building of the city (Rome), the era fixed on by the Romans. 61 This question was first agitated in the reign of Justinian, on the occasion of a proposal on his part to form a treaty with the negroes of Abyssinia. But the Abyssinians were not negroes. 62 Trajan’s wall, between the Danube and the Euxine, at Kostenjie. 63 There were no medical men in Rome for the first five centuries of her great career; and some have fancied that this fact explains the astonishing number of armies which the republic found no difficulty in sending into the field. 64 When unassisted by other deleterious influences, the poison, though all but universal over the locality, may not be destructive. After the draining the Lake of Haarlem, the principal physician of the district informed me that in 2000 cases of ague he had not lost a patient. 65 The choleraic ferment traversed in ships, no doubt, the Atlantic, as typhus had often done before; but there are grounds for believing that vegetable and animal matters in a state of rottenness (fermentation), floating about in the air, are not unfrequently transported to great and almost incredible distances. Ehrenberg and Humboldt have particularly insisted on this fact, and have spoken of distances traversed by these fermentable elements, which I hesitate to quote from memory. Assuredly they were very great, extending to some hundred miles from the seat of their origin. 66 England has often paid a high price for the first steps in science. Mr. Papillion, in 1806, received from Government 10,000l. for the introduction of dyeing Turkey red; and his success was owing to his knowledge of the water proper for the operation, which must be void of fermentable bodies. 67 The ammonia always present in the atmosphere is probably derived chiefly from the union of nitrogen and hydrogen; but much of it also no doubt has its source in the fermentation of animal and vegetable remains. 68 Baron von Lynden. 69 I have known many persons sickly from the effects of intermitting fever or malaria from a residence in warm climates, and who have suffered and perished from an injudicious treatment. Ill-formed or incomplete agues are extremely common, even in the south of England, in London especially. They show themselves under a variety of forms, and with much severity, in the cases of those who, having once visited a true malarious climate, are ever afterwards more or less liable to a return of the disease. Let men reflect; simple truths travel slowly, yet are truths notwithstanding. The death of the well-known M. Soyer was evidently caused by his wholly misunderstanding the nature of his complaint, which, in fact, was a fever originally caught in the Crimea. 70 A friend who resided long on the Grotevisch RiviÈre, and in het land den Caffre, informs me that if the Zuureveld be ploughed up, or altered by the burning, for example, of a Caffre hut, the sour grass, whence the district derives its name, disappears, and sweet herbage of various kinds take its place. None of these exist naturally in the district, so that the seeds must come from great distances. 71 The effects of partial and incomplete drainage have ever been the same. In 1823, when the new Polder was made at Neusen-on-the Sheldt, small-pox raged in the neighbouring villages to such an extent that the children were forbidden to attend school. The effects are to be seen now in persons over sixty years of age, bearing the marks of the epidemic. The whole atmosphere of the district was infected. 72 Law being no body, and quite irresponsible, the blame of these cruel experiments on the health of the population cannot readily be brought home to any one. 73 It is to be remarked that the specific gravity of ammoniacal gas is 53·619; can it be wondered at that this gas should carry bodies from waters which are in a state of slow combustion; during its transit through the air it may even become caustic ammonia? 74 Purification of the Thames. A Letter by F.O. Ward, Esq., addressed to William Coningham, Esq., M.P. London: Renshaw, Strand. 75 It is mentioned in the Report on the Wine Disease in Portugal, that the oidium was first discovered at Margate; if this was the case, might it not have originated from the phosphorescent beings in sea water, observed by all travellers in the evening on the coasts of Flanders, and known in Holland as Zee Vlam? The potato disease is thought by some to have sprung from the same cause. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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