Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1889-07-15
DIR. DIBBLE OBJECTs

To tho Proposed Bylaws OF Pr0fessor
brewer and DR.. Lindsley Regarding
Plum bing-A Spicy Communication
From the Well Known Physician.
The committee on ordinances at their last
meeting considered among other matters the
proposed ordinance of Prof. W. a. Brewer
and DR.. G. A. Lindsey which would require
license for all plumbers and give the board
for plumbing of new buildings and repairs in
| old, and no plumbing not acceptable to this
board could be done. Other power of mag
| nitude is given the board of health by the
proposed ordinance. DR.. F. L. Dibble, who
has frequently had spicy controversies in re-
gard to sanitary matters, sent the follow
ing remonstrance against the proposed
ordinance, which is up to the doctors usual
standard of interest:
'The following is respectfully offered as an
board of health"
Section seems to me a violation of per-
| sonal liberty, which ought not to be tolerated
unless the country is in such danger as to
| call for suspension of the habeas corpus
act. If any man on the face of the earth
wants to set up the plumbing business in the
| city of New Haven he ought to be allowed to
| do 80 without any reference to the board of
Plumbers association or the Servant
Plumbers' association or any man or body OF
men whatever, the same right as he would
have to set up as a butcher, baker, saloon
keeper, druggist, lawyer or doctor.
Section 2. If this is adopted it will put
builders and owners to much unnecessary
trouble and expense; besides, is the board of
Al ..,sl Ill
to judge how house should be plumbed
| than the owner or builder of the samea
Section is particularly obnoxious; it ex-
| poses householders to domiciliary visits of
the most repulsive kind and allows the board
| of health to interfere in matter that can be
better settled by owner and occupant.
Section 6. This is silly and oppressive; the
owner of a builder ought to have if he
wishes all of the materials of the same of the
poorest quality and full of defects unless
thereby he Injuries his neighbor.
Section 7. He (the owner) ought to be al
lowed to have his soil pipes indirect, to run
up hill instead of having fall of one quar-
ter of an inch per foot and also to have his
connections Y-shaped, or at right angles, or
in the form of cork-screw, just as his wis.,
dom or folly, or inclination may dictate.
Section 8. The owner ought to be allowed
to have the soil pipe within the house of
iron, or gold, or silver, or tin, or earthen
ware, or brown paper, and instead of having
"wiped joint" he ought to be allowed not
to connect his joints within ten rods of each
other, If he 80 chooses.
Not to specify further, every one of these
proposed bylaws is silly, or oppressive, or
both. Their passage pre-supposes that
the owners of houses are compound of
fool and knave, and that tenants are idiots
all the way through. These bylaws, in
effect decree that no owner of house shall
have the right-guaranteed him by the Con-
stitution-to make an ass of himself. The
excuse for the passage of these bylaws is
that people may be protected from sewer gas
and the dreadful germ that is supposed to
inhabit the sewers. Now there is no such
thing as sewer gas. The air of sewers has
been repeatedly examined and has been
found not to vary much from the atmos-
phere outside. As distinct gas, sewer gas
exists nowhere but in the brains of the sani-
tarians. 1t is just as reasonable to talk of
street gas, forest gas, kitchen gas, bedroom
gas and factory gas as to talk of sewer
gas.
Oar engineer, Mr.. Hill, says that Mr.
Cheesebrough, who laid out our sewers, de-
clsred that no noxious gases would form in
any sewer If the latter had q certain fall,
and Mr.. Hill says that our sewers have a
much greater fall than Mr.. Cheesebrough
designated. So, according to the best
authority there is no danger of the so-called
sewer gas being formed. I have inquired in
numberless instances of plumbers and super
intendents of public works if thew ever
knew any of their employees being made
sick by sewer gas or if work in the sewers
was paid at higher rate on ac-
count of heard to health. The answer has
always been mo" Altogether there must
be hundreds of thousands of these workmen
in the sewers by night and by day; their
clothing and bodies are saturated with this
deadly gas and loaded with this deadly germ;
they mix with people on the street and sit
down with their families at home, and no.
body Is hurt. Every year thousands of peo-
pie visit the huge sewers of paris. The visit
occupies from two to four hours. Into these
sewers empty the germs of all the diseases
that affect 100000 of people. Nobody
| thinks of taking any precaution against gas
or germ during these visits
In the Connecticut board of health reports
for 1886 and 1887 are the details of the in
spection of State and county prisons. In
nearly all of them there is no protection to the
inmates against gas or germ. Some of these
prisons l visited with others I communicat-
ed by letter. Except the State prison no
death has occurred in these prisons from
zymotic disease, and what was incredible
the keepers could not remember that any of
this disease had ever happened in these pris-
ous, huu Lille uOb Oucy LWo OI uN6 years,
but for fifteen and twenty-five years.
At the State prison the doctor, who has
beeen there almost fifty years, told&ne there
was less zymotic disease in the prison than
| among the people outside. 1 made rough
| calculation that In the last 25 years not less
than 1000, probably 100, 900, had been ex-
posed to this dreadful gas and nobody made
l sick.
will give you the minute history, If you
Il mo ~ Ok hnnaaa u Nav iol,
came under my care Eve years ago. I want
ed to renew the houses, carefully plumb them
tor decency's sake. Many of the tenants had
occupied them long time, from one or two
to fifteen years; the rent was low and the
occupants did not want 1t raised. In every
case pleaded the requirements of health
| they proved to my astonishment q condition
of health which would not be believed if Il
could not be proved. could not find out
that single case of zymotio disease lad oc.
Cured In one Of these unprotected houses fol
20 years. Did the gas and germ in these
houses and prisons protect the occupantsi
On the other hand, look at cities which
have all Of these bylaws. Brooklyn has q
sanitary code of 257 sections. I send you
copy and as q specimen bylaw ask you Il
read section 43, page ~. This code would b,
complete were house owners held RESPONSE
BILE for the number of babies their tenants
have and for the care of the infants linen
The people of Brooklyn are prosecuted TO
heslth's sake. 1t has it's plumbing inspec
tors, its assistant plumbing inspectors. SAM
tary inspectors and assistant sanitary inspec
tors, meat inspectors, dairy inspectors, mill
inspectors, chemists, in all fifty mine Off
oisls, whose united salaries amount to $40,
900.
A man in Brooklyn goes on picnic, gor
ges himself with lobster salad, clam soup
green vegetables, ice. cream, and beer, comel
home and has the stomach ache. Instead o
admitting that he has made hog of him
self, he rushes to the board of health, ant
enters a complaint about what he has eaten
The board is only too glad to take it up ant
make great noise about it.
Another guzzles liquor, and soaks himsel
with tobacco till past midnight, stuffs him
self with Welsh rare-bit, goes to bed, wakel
up in the morning, and by that time begin
to reckon there is something the matter will
the drainage, and he PUSHES to the ever
ready-to-hear-complaints board of healtl
about the plumbing.
Brooklyn's general death rate Is 90 and 2
per 1000, four or five more than that o
New Haven; its zymotic death rate is and
per 1000.
The New Haven board of health report TO
, 1887 records the general death rate less thai
4 O nE 4 O n