Bad Drains; and How to Test Them / With notes on the ventilation of sewers, drains, and sanitary fittings, and the origin and transmission of zymotic disease

Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
R. HARRIS REEVES.
E. & F. N. SPON, 125, STRAND, LONDON.
NEW YORK: 35, MURRAY STREET.
1885.
The impetus given to improvements in sanitary matters by the conferences held during last year at the Health Exhibition, as well as the desire shown by engineers and others to improve the sanitary condition of towns, has induced me to publish the following system of detecting defects in drainage and sanitary fittings.
It must be admitted that grave errors have been committed by engineers, architects, and builders, both in planning the fittings of houses and in laying drains to the main sewers, during the last twenty years. These errors have been found to have produced serious effects on the public health. They have also been the means of establishing throughout the country a number of Sanitary Protection Societies.
These institutions have been the means of saving many useful lives, but I trust that the day is not far distant when these societies will cease to exist, and such terms as “scientific plumbers” and “sanitary arrangements carried out on the most scientific principles” will be a thing of the past.
To my mind it is a national disgrace to know that in this nineteenth century architects and builders fixed fittings to houses, and laid drains from houses to sewers, which affected the health of the occupants to such an extent that it was necessary to establish insurance offices to protect persons from being killed by workmen or their employers. What a page for future historians!
The work or purpose of drains and sanitary fittings is to carry off by water the soil and dirt from our houses, and it is lamentable to think that this cannot be done without injury to life.
What should we say if the same precautions were necessary to test or examine the work of other professions or trades?