The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-09-15 00:00:00

ARTIFICIAL 'CLIMATE,

that there is always in Liverpool a vast amount of bodily
suffering in the shape of indigestion and its associated
evils. This prevails here more than in any place of equal
size. It is a well-known medical fact. Strangers coming
here are usually very keenly sensible of the deteriorated
change in their health—loss of appetite, oppression after
food, headache; languor, restlessness at night, and sto-
mach ailments more or less prominently manifested, with
depression of spirits. Londoners, when down here, espe-
cially complain of these symptoms, although one would
think that London, with its million and a half of popula-
tion, was as bad an atmosphere; but it is not. Medical
men from London usually complain of the depressing
effects of the.climate of Liverpool They must be sup-
posed to be good judges, and their own personal experi-
ences in this matter ought to go further than that of any
other class of witnesses. With others, as merchants, &c.,
other possible concurrent causes might be accused ; but
in the case of medical men it is not so. Again : I know
several medical men resident here, who find all their de-
pressed health improved as soon as they get out of the
atmosphere of the town, which they regain again on re-
turning. A medical practitioner went up to London the
other day, and lost all his former symptoms of indiges-
tion, which returned on his regaining this town. Whilst
there he kept a keen look-out for Liverpool's parallels of
filth, and he declares he could find nothing approaching
to them. The City enjoyed such an immunity from
stinks as quite surprised him.
'The cause cannot lie in the topographical position of
Liverrool. Close to the mouth of a huge tidal river, and
fanned by prevailing breez- s off the Irish Channel from
the westerly:points of the compass, it (right not to be so,
The simple effects of these winds would have a bracing
tendency upon the body, and render the climate colder
than where these strong winds are less felt. To lice in a
colder climate simply, is to gain vigour in proportion to
the stimulus to muscular exertion—at least in those cases
where the body is capable of the grateful effort. Along
with this the appetite is rendered keener, the digestion
quickened, and the sense of living, physical and meta-
physical, heil.litened into the agreeable; the mere sense
of existence is grateful: the•wheels of life, in such cir-
cumstances, perform their revolving play, " not as a toil,
but as a pleasure," and might be compared to the beauti-
ful figure of Virgil's, where "doors" are said to sing
upon their golden hinges" 1 Not so when a sense of
oppression weighs down every corporeal function, and
drags the elastic mind and feelings down to the same
slack level. Then the vegetation (..f our life languishes,
and the respiratory as well as digestive systems do their
work complainingly ; and the latter class of organs have

reason to reproach the former with catering

a vitiated life-

emand of t

ice anc

lystinas, in return for replenished and renewing energies

It must be the artificial climate of Liverpool, as oppo-
sing itself to the natural, which does all this mischief ;
for where it produces in isolated cases only fever and
other well-marked diseases, it strikes generally upon the
systems of all the residents with unfavourable and de-
pressing influence. This general effect has never been
measured—never can be: it is rather to be inferred sta-
tistically from the more determinate results of recorded
diseases and deaths. Thus in the notes and observations
of the medical practitioners here, a vast amount of dete-
riorated health calls for their assistance, and which will
continue to do so, the opprobrium of the town, until the
more than " seventy-two stinks" of Coleridge are ba-
nished from the place.
The "foul, tentrapped sewers," the reeking gulley
holes, the " open drains," the repose of filth, the offal,
and every other kind of street and alley refuse—the
smoke—the slaughter-house remains—the manufactory
nuisances—must all be effectively remedied, before the
Liverpool indigestion and the preventible epidemics will
be reduced down to an average minimum of towns' health.
For my own part, I am inclined to think Liverpool gets
worse at present instead of better. I never knew the town
in the course of my own limited experience so full of
stinks almost in every quarter. There are some gulley-
holes which are in the habit, especially in the lower levels
of the town, of yielding most intolerable stenches, baneful
to the neighbourhood in no small degree, and proclaiming
to every passer-by the " stillness of repose that's there,"
down among the covies of rats whose vested rights have
been acquired by the undisturbed posserF;;-n of many
leases of lives renewable, the fines upon ssc the bi-
ped inhabitants of the superficial area of the town have
been contented -so long and ruefully to pay. The large
plashes of stagnant water all around the precincts of the
town must exercise a depressing power over the popula-
tion.

As for bad drainage, all know the noxiousness of this
wherever it is met ; but in one spot of this town its effects
have been made but too apparent to a medical man. On
the declivity of the hill rising up from Lime-street and
Renshaw-street level, three back streets with bad drain.
age unite at an angle, and pour their surface drainage into
another street which runs horizontally below them. In
some houses of the latter street, near to the junction, a
low kind of febrile attacks has been generally more or
less present in the autumn months for years east. Last
autumn there was an exception to the rule. The season
was very wet, and there can be little doubt that the rain
washing down the gutters clean was the exceptional

state it ever was. 'lnc gutters art: Jun? iu many places,
of green and foetid water. If ever the Asiatic form of
cholera does reach us, such places will be the first to
stiffcr_ and the last to be emancipated from its virulence.

but it'd
cavengers. In 18.32 the first case of chc
hill District broke ou

Des not therefore'follow tifatit

scaienor rate',

ose to High-street, it

ter-street, acconling to Mr. Fell, wbo

a in Edge-
Glouces-
d the pa-