Wuen some forty or fifty years ago the increasing urban populations of England and the Continent woke up to the necessity of taking some measures to preserve the public health, there was but little accumulated experience to guide them.
In a general vague way qi the necessity of sewers,, aud of some way or other of removing the objectionable matters, whioh, of necessity, must exist where large nambers of human iveing are living on a confined space, had been long recognised, but no one bad made a special study of the subject, nor had the results of different systems been tabulated. In England the condition of affairs was looked upon with much complacency, The last attack of the plague in London was in 1665; in 1666 the greater portion of the city was burnt down, and in rebuilding more care was taken for ventilation in the old city. The plague retarned to its old haunts, and it was taken for granted that all that bad been required was done, arid that Great Britain could safely sleep with an easy conscience that everything had been done that reasonable man could require for the preservation of health. The introduction of the steam engine and the consequent growth of mauafacturing. populations, especially in the contre and north of England, upset their complacency; and it was found that ugly spots were still to be found even in the best regulated towns; and that though the typical plague was not present in person, unpleasant relations in the shape of typhus fever, malignant cholera, sear. latin, and other diseases, more or less directly traceable to evil sanitary condition, were widely prevalent. Wo most of us know the results. Sewers were made where sewers were never known before, every house was provided with one or more water closets and aculleries, and every deposit of filth'was made to communicate with the new drains, and these finally were discharged into the nearest watercourses, The results wore satisfactory for a time; the towns were cleaner, the smells decreased, and all England again fell into @ condition of complacency. By and bye the little weaknesses inherent in the new system commenced to make themselves felt, Bad smells from the drains, which had been made the receptnole of every kind of filth, crept up through gratings or entered the basements of houses, The remedy for so simple an affair soamed easily found. Drains and sinks were trapped, and elaborate measures taken to hermetically seal all sewers. The matters which were conveyed into the sowors wore left to purify there, and the drains of the principal towns became nothing better than a series of elongated cesspools, It was fore gotten that purifying matters evolved large quantities of gases, and that, if prevented from escaping, the pressure would accumulate till it was sufficient to overcome the resistance of the water in the traps, which then becanie the means of introducing concentrated sewer gases into the houses, It was likewise forgotten that the occasional presence of largo quantities of water, and in some places the rise of tidal waters must of necessity displace largo entities of these gases, and that the natural means of escape was into the basements of houses by means of private drains, and that there rising by their natural specific gravity they dis seminated themselves through all the upper portions. Now and then the opening of a sewer worse than usual was attended with fatal consequences, and @ verdict of accidental death was returned when some workman trying to enter the fetid atmosphere was taken out a corpse. But this evil of the new system did not end there; the rivers were made the final receptacle, and all the filth of the large towns was poured into them. Large as is the volume of water in the Thames, its condition became so bad that extensive works had to be undertaken to prevent the contamination, The Rea at Birmingham, the Irwell at Manchester, the Rach at Rochdale, were, however, only insiancés of the extent to. which the. water-ways of the country were being
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.