The Portland daily press., 1872-01-13
sSa sSi pee 6Seeoming baked into hard crust, while

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1t might be inferred from such facts 90
these that residence on or near wet nm
dralned lands would be productive of disease
In man. And such has been abundantly
proved to be the fact
DIR. BOwditch has clearly shown that soil
moisture is one of the .chief causes of con-
sumption. In his report to the Massachu-
setts Medical Society, in 1852, he lays down
the following propositions, which his facts
seem to justify, viz:
FIRST. Consumption is not equally dstrib-
uted over New England
Second. Its greater or less prevalence de-
pends very much upon the characteristics of
the soil on or near which the patients affect
ed with it have resided.
Third Moisture of the soil is the only
known characteristic, that, so far as our pres
ent investigations have gone, is connected
with the consumption-breeding districts"
he reports that this fearful disease is not
equally distributed within limits of individual
| toonS, ana that even separate houses in the
same village are not all alike exposed to its
| raVages He writes, "In some townships
twice or thrice as many die (of consumption)
In the wet as in the dry districts - and again,
even some houses may become the foci Of
consumption when Others but slightly re-
moved from them, but in drier soil, almost
wholly escape"
Again, foul and neglected pripies are
pregnant source Of disease. While these
doubtless favor the development of other dis
eases, especially of the digestive system, and
also modify unfavorably the type of existing
diseases, they seem to be specially related to
the causation of typhoid fevers, cholera, &c.
Out of very numerous recorded
cases the following is selecred as an example:
In the summer of 1864 violent outbreak
oftyphoid fever occurred at the Maplewood
Institute, young ladies' boarding schoo! in
Pittsfeld, Mass. Out of seventy-seven young
ladies hfty-one were attacked, and thirteen
died Three servants also died. In the town
OF Pttsfeld, out side of the Institute, with 5000
inhabitants, only eight cases occurred in the
same period, all Of which recovered. The
school being broken up for the time and its
reputation suffering, at the request of the
Trustees, Professors Palmer, Ford and Earle
made thorough investigation and report.
The privy vaults were found to have been
shallow and filed nearly to the surface of
the ground with semi-fuid materials, as they
were the receptacles of the slops from the
chambers" One of these was cleaned out on
one of the warmest nights of the season, a
pupil testifying that ''The odor was perfectly
dreadful, and that she believed it had some
thing to do with the sickness" 1t was even
found necessary to close the doors and win
dows of the dormitories some of the hottest
nights on account of the offensive smell. The
kitchen and laundry drains discharged upon
the surface of the ground, and few rods dis
tant was barn yard in low land containing
foul water in which swine wallowed, all emit
ting an offensive smell. The water brought
by aqueduct from distance was ofunquestion-
able purity. The committee were unanimous
in the opinion that "The disease essentially
originated in the state of the privies and
drainage ofthe place."
| Again, leaky drains are dangerous. These
| may poison the atmosphere with gaseous
emanations, especially into the cellars of
houses, or may impregnate the drinking wa
ter with the foul elements. Wheu we rem
ember that wells are estimated to drain the
surrounding surface in radius of perhaps
three times their own depth, we can easily
imagine the disgusting and dangerous posi-
bililies afforded by leaky drains and vaults in
their immediate vicinity. A single instance
out of many will suffice to illustrate. About
the middle of June, 1880, typhoid fever broke
out in boarding house in Wiliamstown,
Massachusetts, in which there were thirty to
thirty-fve table boarders, mostly students of
| Williams College. In the course of two
| weeks twenty or more of them were attacked
| with typhoid fever DIR. s. Duncan, one Of
the attending physicians, on investigation,
found that drain which received all the ref
use of the house was choked near its exit into
another drain, which conveyed surface water
from highly cultivated field, and which also
ran near the well. The season was uncom-
monty wet, and the earth in the immediate
neighbOrhosd of the well was so completely
saturated with organic matter, that it ooZed
through the ground and stood in pools of
putrescence on the surface" Among the
boarders were number who did not drink
the water at dinner, all of whom escaped.
"All that drank the water unboiled had the
disease. All who avoided it in this state es-
capped" "It appeared that the action of
heat rendered the water innocuous, either by
volatilizing, coagulating or otherwise chang
| ing the organic matter" "Those were the
subjects of the severest sickness who were ex-
clusively drinkers of water' (ofcourse cold).
''The water, when carefully noticed, was
found to Taste and smell of the sewage;
though when served upon the table with ice,
these qualities were not perceived.
Again, decOnlpOsing animal and vegetable
tissues promote the occurrence of disease.
Putrid flesh is generally regarded as un-
wholesome as it is offensive. After great bat
| ties, where many carcasses of horses are left
unbured ON the field, camps, otherwise most
desirable, are often evacuated from sanitary
considerations. We have been for weeks
reading with painful interest accounts from
the devoted city of Buenos Ayres. Three
quarters of its population driven away by yel-
low fever! OF the remainder, deaths at the
rate of four hundred to seven hundred day !
Its dead counted by tens of thousands! A
newspaper correspondent, after stating that
there is "No drainage in the city, and its
foundations are completely honey-combed
with vaults, &c. goes on to say: "There is a
box in every house, into which all the sweep
ings Of the rooms, all that is left in the kitch-
en-, such as bones, pieces Of meat &C., are
thrown; and meat is so cheap that the bones
are not scraped quite so closely as they are
here, and the consequence is much meat finds
its way into these boxes, is decomposed soon
in that climate, and when the police cart
comes after these boxes in the morning there
is necessarily bad smell all over the city.
These boxes, or their contents, are dumped
not far away, and the consequence is tnat a
death-dealing miasma is constantly arising
from these heaps"
ii. AS to methods of relief, ,ohat can be
done?
/. Wet lands should be avoided as places
of residence, or else thoroughly drained
Bedford Level, in England, and Harlem Lake
are notable instances of the redemption of
large tracts froma waste and pestilential con-
dition. In the latter case, seventy square
miles were drained of water twelve and three
quarters feet deep, all of which had to be
raised sixteen feet before it could be discharg-
ed. The region was thus rendered product
i've and salubrious.
2. Effective systems of sewerage may be
established in cities and large towns. The
portance of such measures has long been to
SOuc ucSrcc dppIcCidtcu. AuClcuI ROuc
was so channeled and arched underneath as
to be called by Pliny, 'urbs pensilis." The
largest of its drains, called the ciOdcG magma
consisted of three tiers of everything arches
measuring together fifteen feet wide by thirty
! deep. King Agrippa is said to have sailed
through it in a boat, and Nero to have thrown
his victims into it.
Sd. The Dry Earth System may be re-
sorted to in many cases in which satisfactory
sewerage cannot be established. The ex
pense necessarily involved, lack of the requi
site cooperation and agreement on the part
of the several parties interested to secure al
effective plan, scarcity of water to use in
; water-closets and for flushing drains, and
! want of a suitable and convenient place fol
the discharge of the sewage, are often serious
if not insuperable obstacles in the way Of the
sewerage system. The dry-earth system Il
comparatively inexpensive, very simple In
method, and it can be adopted by communi'
ties or used by individuals Independently. II
is easy of application in crowded camps, bar
3 racks. summer hotels and boarding houses
f whose priyies, towards the end of the hot
{ season, become intensely offensive to the nos.
$ trils and dangerous to health, and where the
whole offense and danger could be removed
by the simple throwing in of few shovels
full of dry earth daily.
III. The duty of the Profession to th'
| n0NsaVs, IT, L., noff TnAn