The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-04-01
[From the Milwaukee Sentinel.]
POISON EVERYWHERE.
Is There 10 Escape From 1t?

mortal the battlefield of life. By the
masses, even the existence of the enemy is
not suspected. This foe works with an
impartiality as cold as the grave. 1t takes
Just as much pains to find beggar in an
alley as it does to find King in his palace.
Like the Erd-Geist, plying Sat the roaring
loom of Time" it ''maketh no haste aud
taketh no rest" 1t smote the consort of
Queen Victoria, and filled her royal house
with mourning. 1t shook the English heir
to the throne fright over the pitt" to use
the phrase of the old Scotch preacher ap-
piled to "that wicked King jamie" 1t
creeps into the upper fiat Of a tenement
house, and every day for q month starts off
solemn procession towards "the only rest
tor the weary
To begin where we might have begun in
the beginning 1t has been discovered and
demonstrated that sewers in towns and
privies in the country are the birth-places
and homes of poison that is fearfully de-
structive of life. This poison does not ex-
list in the fresh dejecta of, the human body.
The excreta, like other matters of organic
origin containing nitrogen, readily decom-
pose, or, in other words, are putrescble.
1t is in the decomposition of dejecta that is
generated deadly gas--called by recent
investigators er-gas-which finds its
way into our costliest homes, and often
claims even the most fastidous as its VIC
tins. The atmosphere of privies in the
rural districts is constantly loaded with the
same poison. The dsagreeabiy smelling
fresh nnexcreta are offensive enough to the
senses, but are not poisonous. Even un-
der favorable circumstances, twenty-four
hours must elapse before the decomposi-
ton begins that generates the life-destroy-
ing sewer-gas. The faults Of outhouscs,
and the narrow underground passages de-
signed to carry off the waste and filth of
cities, are excellent laboratories for pro-
ducing the invisible death-dealing poison in
exhaustlest quantities. The bed of every
sewer is covered with dark deposit from
which TIE subtle chemistry of nature per-
petually diStils the gas that through the
very contriyauces of our private luxuries
invades our habitations, and there becomes
more dangerous than would be a Lucretia
Borgia with phial of dqua tofaRa.
But some one will ask, how the poison
Gus gas can enter well-buit house in
which the plumbing" is perfect? In city
dwellings the waste-pipe from every mar
bic wash-basin, or from the water-closet,
leads to the sewer under the street.
Wherever water can pass down, gas can
pass up. 1t will be said that every waste
pipe, where the plumbing is good, is prop
erly trapped" Even the iaultless "sy-
phOn trap" is no more impervious to gas
from below than to water from above.
/ We grant that when the atmospheric pres
sure from within the house exactly bal
ances the pressure from the sewers, there
will be no influx of the deleterious gas.
But when the water sets back in the out
lets of sewerage, when the sewers are more
or less filled, from melting snow or falling
rain, then the pressure is greater below
the trap than above it, and the deadly
Sewer-gas will enter the house. And,
when the barometer rapidly falls, the pres
sure of air above the trap will be less than
that below it. Then the same poison will
find its way to the atmosphere i'll which we
sleep with fancied security. Sensitive per-
sons often pfognosticate a storm lit is just
then that the barometer falls) by peculiar
smell in the house. An unseen and un-
known enemy climbs the shifting wind,
through faultless water-trap, and creeps
into our very blood. Moreover, sewer-gaS
is always being formed, is always lighter
and generally better than atmospheric air.
Nor does it confine it's entrance to the way
already described. DIR. Andrew Fergus, of
Scotland, who has given especial attention
to this subject, has shown that transverse
leaden MASTERPIECES are rapidly eaten
through, probably by the sewer-gas, from
within, and on the upper side. The water,
flowing on the lower side, does not escape
and reveal the Leak, The poison makes a
clandestine entrance for itself, and the
housewife worries herself about sickly
smell of "dead rato in the wall, while a
wiewless serpent, not less deadly than the
cobra, darts its invisible tongue into the
very lungs of her little ones. The doctor
comes and satisfies our minds with big
Latin word for some unknown disease. The
minister follows him and comforts our
hearts by laying it to the good God. Verify
our ignorance is rank" and "smells to
heaven"
Science has not yet determined what the
nature of this poison is. Like other poisons,
it INJURIES In various degrees, or kills ac-
cording to the quantity taken into the
system. The diseased condition caused by
it, stimulates typhoid fever, diphtheria,
cholera, dysentery, etc., in fact, most OF
the maladies of zymatic origin. When the
air of the sick-room is infected with it,
whatever disease the patient may be labor
ing under is intensified by it. Very able
and conservative medical men have no
doubt that the influence of sewer gas will
develop, if not produce, erysipelas, puer-
pural fever, carbuncle, hospital fever,
tuberculosis, gangrene, putrid sore-throat,
malignant diarrhea, etc. 1t will awaken
in the human body germs of disease that
might have lain dormant, under favorable
conditions, to the end of natural life. In
the first place, no excreta should be con-
veyed from our habitations to the sewers.
In the second place, the sewers should be
closed against the refuse of factories, con-
tanning putrescible matter. In the third
place, all excreta and putrescble refuse
should Immediately be rendered harmless
by chemical or other disintectants, and
should be removed every twenty-fours.
Nature is ever teaching us valuable les
sons if We will only open our eyes to be-
hold her "open secret" What is refuse
in one place is food in another, is a univer-
sal law. The earth feeds plants, plants
plants feed animals, plants and animals
feed man, some animals feed other animals,
the waste and decay OF plants and animals
feed the earth again. Thus nature per-
petually squares mystic circle. We OBJ
struct her simple process to our own un
doing. With short-sighted cunning, we
tSeal ont MANY invantionS for our com e. rt