The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-06-25
The Great Sanitary Problem.

The Great Sanitary Problem.
The great sanitary problems which annually
come round with the heated cycle are now
looming up before US, and are demanding
solution more imperiously than ever. There
is no lack of sanitary rules and sanitary statis-
tics laid before the public, but little or no
general instruction regarding the great laws
OF health which intelligent citizens are pos
sessed of might practically apply more saga
ciously and extensively than the health
authorities themselves. The cheated term
is usually regarded as the harvest time of
disease, and yet there is no good reason why
it should be. except in failure to know and
deal correctly with the peculiar atmospheric
changes OF the season Although the great
epidemics emanate from or first appear in the
tropics or near them, this fact is probably due
not SO much to tropical heat as to the excess
of moisture from the adjoining oceans and
the excess of organic matter in the surround
ing atmosphere. In many almost tropical
climates longevity is remarkable
striking instance of this being found at
Malaga, on the hot shores of the
Mediterranean, where, out Of small popula-
ton, ten or twelve males. who had all reached
the age Of one hundred and five yearss, have
been known to die in one year. showing per-
haps that this city, crowded as it is, is the
most salubrious in the world. II is, more
over, mistake to suppose that the heat alone
necessarily relaxes the body and renders it a
prey to disease. The Egyptian teamster and
the Spanish muleteer habitually walk or trot,
from sunrise to sunset, by the side of their
animals, with but little intermission, in the
hottest weather. The prodigious marches of
troops, in many summer campaigns might be
cited, especially the famous march of Dor
ton OF Wellington's army to Talavera, in
which, according to Napier, leaving only
seventeen stragglers behind, in twenty-six
hours during the hottest season, they passed
over sixty-two miles, each soldier carrying
more than fifty pounds. We're our eli
mates as dry as those of the Spanish
Peninsula or Upper Egypt it is certain
the physical prostration and mortality of
our Summers would be greatly reduced and
conditions of health is avoidance of the atmos-
phere which is at once humid and hot. If
the watering of the streets and avenues could
be arrested during the middle of the day and
early afternoon there would doubtless be
great falling off in the cases of sunstroke. But,
leaving out of view any municipal regulation
of this kind, the comfort and salubrity OF the
city greatly depends upon preventing all un-
necessary waste of water or deluging the
streets with water, which, when evaporated by
the fiery midday sun, renders our thorough
fares intolerably suffocating.
The water supply of this city gives more
than hundred and twenty gallons to each
inhabitant and if very small percentage of
this is SO exposed as to be dissipated by the sun
or thrown into the cutters and alleys (where
it seems to develop rapid and enormous de-
composition of vegetable and other matter), it
becomes curse rather than a blessing. It
is not unlikely that this waste of water
and its resultant evils explain, to great
degree, the large Summer mortality of
cities as compared with country seats or vii
lagos destitute of water works, where the
water supply is obtained by hard manual
labor and hence more carefully husbanded
Faraday once tested the air to the windward
of Brighton and found ozone, while in the
city limits it was not to be detected. In the
latter it had been probably used up in oxidiz-
ing the gases composed of hydrogen and
phosphorus or sulphur, which deter0rate the
air and render it irrespirable, for it has been
found that ozone test papers in the neighbor-
hood of city slums do not remain permanently
colored, the aerial poisons being more than
match for the great aerial purifier
But, however we may explain it!ethe fact
remains that applied sanitary science has not
yet mastered the matter of municipal health.
Experiments long and cautiously protracted
have shown that while the volume per cent of
oxygen in seashore and mountain air differs
from that in the air Of the suburbs of Man.
chester, England, by only .O4, the difference
between that of air in the close rear Of houses
and in the open front or parks of Lon
don is as much as 25. In other words, the
transition from the alleys of London to
its parks is marked by a greater increase of
salubrity than by q trip from the suburbs of
Manchester to the seaside or the mountain
top. To reverse the case, similar experiments
have confirmed tie inference to be drawn
from the above facts in Madrid, where the
presence of deadly carbonic acid in the cir
inside the city is vastly more noticeable than
outside or in its open places, while the life
giving oxygen element was much in excess