Los Angeles daily herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1884-1890, 1889-10-06
AN INDIGNANT DOCTOR.
He yhinks a Local Paper q
AsAmine Affair.

He yhinks a Local Paper an
Asinine Affair.
A HERALD reporter was going through
one of the big buildings in this city few
days ago, when resident physician
came out and said: "See here! / want
to be interviewed"
The reporter entered the office, and
this disciple of Esculapius pulled out OF
drawer copy Of The Journal Of the
american Medical association, a publica-
ton from Chicago, and under date of
September 18th last, proceeded to read
the following:
"We regret to learn that proposition to
issue bonds for the construction of q
sewer to the sea has been defeated by ,
popular vote of the citizens. The neces-
sity for the successful carrying out of
some plan to relieve this fair city from
the neisome and sickening odors arising
from the so-called sewers now in exist
ence, may be judged from a paragraph
which recently appeared in local paper:
Los Angeles ia city of from 10000 to
$4,000 people. 1t is almost without sew-
ers. More than three-fourths of it has no
sewerage at all. The small sewers We
have are choked and overlooking, and
foul matter is often forced out of them.
Sewer gas from leaks and overlooking
sewers floats in the business centers at
night, and in the residence portion the
air is heavy with foul odors and gases
from neighboring cesspools. The soil of
the city is in general such that it does
not absorb the foul matter, and that rem
ders the situation worse. In many parts
of the city the odor at nights from cess
pools is 80 strong that residents are
obliged to close their windows. Children
are dying with diphtheria as result of
these cesspools.
"To longer delay action will be worse
than criminal. Money should not count
where the health OF the people is at stake.
We trust that the press of California will
30 arouse public opinion that this blot on
the escutcheon of the gem of the Pacific
Coast may be removed, and Los Angeles
once more regain its reputation as a
health resort"
The Doctor went on to say: CHOW the
Los Angeles paper which has 30 will
fully libeled the city in this paragraph
had an excellent opportunity few daye
ago to partially undo the great injury in
! flicted on Los Angeles. One of its con.
temporaries excused these utterances
for the offending paper on the plea that
thess articles-it published several like
this one-were printed during an excit-
ing discussion on the sewer bond ques-
tion, and that it did not mean all it said.
Instead of trying to set the city right,
that paper came out, and pig-headed
as it is in it's policy, it
stuck right to the fabrication, repeated
the statement, insisted it was true, and
thus opened the wounds it had before in.
flicted, and set the city wrong again be-
fore the outside world.
| "What does the journal mean? Does
it not know that there are nearly twenty
miles of good sewers now in the city !?
Does it not know that all the business
center, and the greater part of the heavily
peopled residence portion of the city is
severed? Does it not know that for q
city of lis size, Los Angeles is without a
peer in the whole world for healthful-
ness? There may be a few cases of
ldiphtheria here at times. There always
have been. There are many causes
for such occurrences that no precautions
can guard against. l am a practiciug
physician here, with large family prac-
tice. l have been here for many years,
and l tell you as matter of fact there is
not, and has not been, much sickness of
any sort in Los Angeles during the past
year. There has been no more cases of
diphtheria than usual, population con-
sidered. The air here is remark
ably pure and sweet, night and
day, and the man who complains
of foul smells in this city does not know
what he is talking about, or else be is
stating deliberate falsehood. It is a
foul shame for newspaper which lives
off the business and interests of a CITY to
} do that city and those who have interests
at stake in it so great injustice in SO
wanton manner, with no facts to justify
the statements, and then in very obsti-
macy, when the poor occasion there was
for such misstatements had passed, to
reiterate and stick to the fiction it had
created. Print that, and that is all l
have to say"
Scale Bugsiin Pasadena.
| Yesterday the board of bup commits.