Year: 1875

Malaria anu Poisoned Homes.


Some little experiments are performed
every year in most medical schools which are
denounced by the philanthropists as cruel I;
but they are instructive One of the simplest
is done with two pigeons Pigeon number
one is put into glass jar previously filed
with carbonic acid gas, and the pigeon dies
almost as suddenly as if shot. This exhibits
the deadliness of the gas and the unpleasant
consequences of any effort to get on without
pure air. Pigeon number two is then put
into similar jar, which contains pure air.
but an apparatus is attached by which a
small stream of the same deadly carbonic
acid gas is sent into this jar also. Here the
point of the experiment is the gradual
introduction of the poison the scarcely
perceptible mingling of q deadly vapor
with the DEMONSTRATING air; the 'adultera-
ton" Of the air to the last possible de-
gree and the exhibition of the extent
to which the animal system will tolerate,
when thus given in gradually increas-
ing doses, a poison which kills almost
instantly if suddenly substituted for
the respirable air. This second pigeon
does not die if the experiment is deftly
done, and he may be kept for some min
utes in air quite as impure as that which
killed the first, and will still revive
when taken out


Hundreds of people in natural sympathy
with the friends of this bird that is 1.-THE
symbol of purity" will cry out, perhaps, at
al nf
they are quite welcome. But let them first
cast an eye about their homes, and be
sure that they are not now actually, every
day and night performing an experiment
just like this on their own little pigeons.
From one-quarter to one-half of the
children in this city are treated every
day just as the pigeons are treated in this
experiment, and this by the connivance of
parents, landlords and the city authorities
Our houses are so many glass jars, made
reasonably tight to keep out the cold, and
this condition sufficiently keeps in the
deadly gases, which rise out of q cellar
saturated with the pent-up moisture of some
old marsh or watercourse As if this were
not enough, we attach to the sewer good
sized pipe with from twelve to twenty open
ings in the house, one for every room or
hallway or bathtub or closet SO here is the
whole apparatus the waste pipe that con-
ducts the poison up from that pestilent con-
gregation of vapors, the sewer; the walls Of
the house that confne it just sufficiently,
and the unconscious prattlers upon whom
the poison acts with such certainty-poor
little huttering pigeons on the floor, in the
trundle beds and the cribs.


In some of the houses in the worst quar-
ters the children are killed suddenly some
night as the steam from eighboring factory
or hotel discharged into the sewer drives the
gas up in enormous quantities by its sudden
pressure; but in most places they are killed
slowly-the poor little life wanes gradually
under the influence of the poison breathed
through weeks, months and years. In many
places the malarious emanations have been
so marked through the whole autumn that
all diseases originating in miasma or in
creased by it have exhibited its influence, and
the diphtheria, that has become apparently
permanently endemic here, threatens to
scourge the city terribly this winter; for the
weakened constitutions of children, poisoned
4 BY sewer gas, are favorable field for its
ravages