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

MENTAL THAN USEFUL

Mr. Burrows, surgeon, informs me, that in a court in
Parr-street, the usual decoration of two privies at the end
of the court are armei with a wooden spout, or chimney,
leading from their cess-pool. purporting to carry off the
noxious gases. This is one of the modernized plans for
effecting this purpose. The tube is carried upwards so
far only as to face nearly opposite, but not quite, the top
windows of the end houses. Instead of diffusing the gas
over the house tops, it pauses halfway ; and can it be
wondered, then, that the occupant of a room belonging to
one of these top windows has low fever. The invalid de-
clares, that to open the window is to get a worse air than
that of his sick-chamber. Ventilation here must be at a
discount, just because a proper thing of its kind is only
half done. Had a sanatory commissioner but seen this
error, and suggested the necessity of merely lengthening
this tube, this case of sickness might have been co doubt
prevented.
. . .

It seems vain to multiply instances of the bad effects
of these wretched arrangements; but the present is too
striking an instance to pass over. It is not a demonstra-
tion of cause and effect, I grant; but it is, nevertheless,
as strong a probability as can be found, short of absolute
proof. Conviction of the noxiousness of such half reme-
dies is increasing : the party in the opposite corner has
signified intentions of leaving.

A.CCIDENTS IN TliE MERCANTILE ECONOMY OP THE
NUISANCE CAPABLE el

PORT, ATTENDED WITH
MITIGATION, INSTANCED

A month or two back, the lower parts of the town
about George's Dock, were infested, for days together,,
with a most horrid stench, from heaps of burning and
burnt corn, among which quantities of hides, also partly
burnt, were lying, the result of an accidental fire of a large
warehouse. I do not mean to say the nuisance, in the
first instance, could have been remedied, or could be any
other than subject of regret for the lo,s of property. But
what did the authorities do ? They allowed a large vacant
space between the pier baths and the dock to be strewn
over with the charred corn, along with pieces of burnt
hides—this spreading and sorting-out of the unfortunate
results of the fire producing the most disgusting stench
possible, which was allowed thus to spread in clouds over
the district, and as the wind was blowing from the west-
ward when I had occassion to pass by to the pier for one
of the ferries, I observed that the odious vapours took, of
course, the direction of the wind at the time, and conse-
quently were blown over the town, to the great annoy-
ance of all parties within reach of the impure vapour. It
was distinctly perceivable in Lord-street and about there,
and continued for some days, as I was informed by those
who, being located there, were excessively annoyed by the
nuisance. It was a general conviction, as far as passing
remarks could indicate it, that the thing might have been
far otherwise and better managed. The disgusting re-
mains might have been taken away, at once, out of the
town district altogether, so as to free the neighbourhood
from the polluting annoyance. It bad to be carted away
finally, and should have been done at first ; or suppose
that this was, from the heated condition of the charred
rubbish, impossible in the first instance, yet some chemi-
cal agency might have been employed to decompose, if
only partially, the noxious effluvia in the act of being
formed ; and this, even if expensive, ought to have been
attempted, to say the least of it. Lime, in some shape or
other, might have been had recourse to. The stuff was
only fit for manure as it was, and the addition of a little
chemistry wculd have only improved the heap for agricul-
tural purposes.

Several letters appeared in our newspapers at the time,
complaining of the nuisance ; but though proclaiming the
annoyance to the sense of smelling, yet possibly these
complainants were hardly aware that the disgust was the
least obnoxious feature of the case, for that there was
danger to the health of the parties of the neighbourhood
the nearest and most exposed to it. Referring to the fact
at the time, Captain H- informed me that a vessel,
whilst lying in the river near Calcutta, and having a
cargo of hides, had the crew all more or less affected
with fever, which was fatal in more than one case.
He commanded her. The captain attributed the fever
to the intolerable effluvia from the hides affected by
the burning rays of the sun. There can be no doubt of
the correctness of the alleged cause of the fever. Now,
in our own case, even though fever did not result, yet it
does not follow that there was no prejudice to health.
Lesser disorders might, and in all probability did, to a
limited extent, occur.

If fever had occurred in the above instance, it would
have been of a typhoid character—in fact, the worst kind
of typhus : there can be no medical doubt on this head.
I do not know that any case of fever did present itself,
but most assuredly that cause which, when acting in a
concentrated form, would be adequate to the production
of one of the most fatal diseases, would not prove entirely
innocent even when diluted as a poison. We know that
prejudicial health is often traceable to causes of so miti-
gated a character, as to prove inadequate to that entire
poisoning of the whole system which is the case when
typhus results. And I may remark, under the heading
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-
tioo, which returned on his regaining this town. Whilst
there he kept a keen look-out for Liverpool's parallels of
filth, and be declares be 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
Liverpool. 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 might 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 live 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, heightened 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"! Not so when a sense of
oppression weighs down every corporeal function, and
drags the elastic mind and feelings down to the some
slack level. Then the vegetation of 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-
current, whereby the nervous system is not sustained
adequately to the demanc

he diges

ive and

systems, 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 cf 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, t'lntrappell sewers," the reeking guile
y
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 posse.,i—, of many
leases of lives renewable, the fines upon v.,..„1i tice 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 past. 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
cause. _

—High-street, Edge.hill, is still much in the disgraceful
state it ever was. The gutters are full, in many places,
of green and foetid water: If ever the Asiatic form of
cholera does reach us, such places will be the first to

suffer, and the last to ne emancipated from its virulence.
Several of the inhabitants of the street have to pay for
scavenger rafes, but it does not therefore follow that they
get-scavengers. In 1832 the first case of cholera in Edge.
hill District broke out close to High-street, in Glouces-
ter-street, according to Mr. Fell, who attended the pa.