Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-01-26

Dreathe. The dark, close sewers c0noense
deadlier gases than offal heaps oxydized by
sun and air. These are not my words at all
but what able scientific men, sanitary en-
gineers and doctors have been trying tor 90
years to teach the world, and which Ia
grippe comes as avant courier to proclaim
before cholera and plague come as destroy
ing angels to enforce. The world will not
learn, though one rise from the dead to
teach; it must go down to death itself before
1t will believe. The truth must be told and
insisted upon. The conditions of our sani-
tary matters in town and country alike are
simply heathenish. One OF the three oldest
and wealthiest cities in the Union has a
mass of public buildings unfinished, al
ready costing $12, 900, 900, while the sewage
In its business streets runs through open
cutters and kennels, filling the air with
sickening odors and its homes with low
fevers. Those who have died needlessly
from this indecent drainage should be buried
at the foot of this costly monument of civic
lncapacity, the tower whose cost applied to
public health would have saved thousands
of lives yet to be lost.
MORE vIRULENT YEAR BY YEAR.
The filth of cities, the ignorant sanitary
customs of country places where the per-
fume of roses and apple orchards cannot
hide the smells of death from unsafe drains
are so many crimes against humanity which
must meet a fearful penalty. The types of
disease become more virulent year by year
as the sites of human habitation saturate
the soil with surface water, gas and sewage.
That must overtake our civilization which
caused the destruction of the old cities of
India and the great towns of antiquity, like
Sardis Laodicea and Nineveh, which Sir
Henry Acland, M. D., says from his travels
IN Asia Minor, came to an end because it
was impossible longer to inhaDit those filthy
and fever-stricken places; that the soil by
long residence was so deteriorated that, as
towns could not move, they ceased to be
habltable.
Nor Is this all. Not one house in hun
dred has its supply of pure air direct from
outdoors, but is content to breathe air of the
cellar drawn through the furnace, bringing
smells unendurable to senses used to better
things. In the streets we are compelled to
breathe dangerous dust, loaded with every
foulness, or inhale the fumes of put1efying
garbage. Public conveyances are vehicles
of contagion in the breath of their inmates.
W. R. Nichols, of Boston, found more than
twice as much deadly carbonic acid in the
air of passenger cars than in the Berkeley
street sewer.
PIPES LEADING FROM HOUSES
As Prof. Kerr vigorously said before the
Royal Institute of Architects, "a house in
this climate is closed box from which the
cleansing air is apt to be excluded. Besides
its own Vitisted air the house is in commu-
nication with an underground world of sew
ers in which the gases Of decomposition are
constantly generated, and all pipes from the
house to this uncleanness are pipes to the
house therefrom, the sewer air forcing its
way in with still greater energy than the
cleansing atmospheric air. We will not
speak yet the dreaded names of cholera and
yellow fever, but typhoid is sure to follow
upon the prostrations of this winter, and
will cost the country millions more before
the year is out, unless searching reforms in
sanitary matters are made matters of first
moment. After the ten commandments, the
first thing taught by Moses was sanitary law,
which should be the great ruling interest
with priests and politicians, teachers and
society, till it is comprehended and full
filled"
A FOE IS AT OUR DOORS.
All our schemes of education, wealth and
pleasure go halt for want of health. If we
do not suspend them long enough to learn
this great lesson. pestilence will suspend
them for us and force us to learn.
There should be no question of means
when the alternative is our lives and those
of our children. A foe is at the doors worse
than English ironclads or Spanish pri-
vateers. Government sanitary bonds should
be as good investments as any per cents
in the markets, if the work cannot be better
done. Men, fathers, brothers of America,
we women appeal to you for protection
against the foe which walks in darkness.
Upon our pleasant things falls the shadow
of the wing of destroying angel. Shall it
depart from our coast before it has taken
the youth, the health, the loveliness out of
our homes? SHIRLEY DARE.