APPENDIX.
To avoid overloading the text, I have thrown into the form of an Appendix several Notes more or less intimately connected with the great question considered in the body of the work. They may be read with or without any reference to the various headings they treat of.
Note 1.
By the deodorizing processes now in use, the ammonia, the most valuable constituent of manures, is destroyed; whilst by the flushing of sewers with an excessive quantity of water it is dissipated; hence the low value, or rather the absolute inutility of the sewage of large towns, as manure, when diluted with the surface drainage and other waters, excepting in the case of reclaiming waste lands, in order to convert them into meadows of so highly objectionable a character that no one can or will reside near them. The smell from such meadows is most abominable.
Even in such cases an outfall must be provided for the surplus sewage waters, either into a river or into the sea, for the meadows to be irrigated require but little of it, and that only occasionally and during droughts.
The fixing the ammonia is the great difficulty the agriculturist experiences in all questions respecting those manures which naturally contain or produce it. Its volatility is so great that it not only readily escapes into the air, but carries along with it, especially from waters, bodies at the moment in a state of slow combustion; or, in other words, ferments, capable of exciting fermentation in other fermentable bodies.
It may even pass into the condition of caustic ammonia.[73]
In a well written pamphlet by Mr. Ward,[74] the unhappy and fatal mistake of mixing the surface drainage with the sewage of London is clearly pointed out for the hundredth time, but the parties who planned the scheme will no more take notice of such facts than they did fifteen or twenty years ago, when they commenced their work of polluting the Thames and other rivers.
To Mr. Ward’s proposal of purifying the river and fertilizing the land by tubular drainage, there are, however, many serious objections.
Note 2.—Habits of the WILDE, in desert or uninhabited countries.
It is known to sportsmen that in the neighbourhood of hills, partridges leave the low grounds at the approach of evening, and take themselves to the hilly or more elevated district. Nature has taught them a very curious fact in meteorology, namely, that on leaving the valley at night, and ascending the hill, the temperature of the air increases up to a certain elevation, and from that point upwards decreases. The game ascends to the point of highest temperature, and there remains for the evening. A friend informs me that whilst crossing the high range of mountains forming the watershed between the Grotevisch Rivière and the Zondag Rivière, in Southern Africa, he experienced as he ascended intense cold, with heavy dews in the valleys through which ran the sources of the Grotevisch Rivière, and these continued until he reached the base of the crowning heights. Here the party slept in a mud-hut belonging to a Dutch boer. During the ascent they saw no game; but on climbing about half way up the remaining steep before daybreak next morning, they reached a spot where all the large game had congregated. It was the point of greatest warmth, generally a few hundred feet above the plain, and below the summit of the mountain. From this point to the summit the cold was most intense, and snow lay on the high peaks of the mountains.
When the shells of infusoria are driven about in the atmosphere they lose their carbonate of lime by the acid fermentation; and the membranous portions having the properties of coagulated albumen, and being also fermentable, may, by passing into the blood, become excitants of fermentation. This has been already fully explained in the text.[75]
Note 3.—Moss.
In the Annales de Chimie, volume xxix. p. 225, mention is made that the walls of various towns which had been under water for several years having become exposed, from the effects of a dry summer and hot weather, became covered with vegetable matter, the decomposition of which infected the atmosphere, and caused great sickness in the environs, and particularly where buildings were situated in marshes in communication with the sea. The vegetation, in fact, was composed of lichens.
On a recent visit to Bangor, in North Wales, I was struck with the nice firm turf which was in the garden; and upon inquiring of the gardener, he informed me that the turf came from the seeds blown from the hills, and that it required great care on the part of the farmers to keep it under, or it would be exceedingly injurious to land and buildings if neglected. When it grows on walls it splits them by the capillary expansion of its roots between the bricks operated upon by damp hot weather. I have seen this lichen destroy the pillars of a gateway three feet thick.
Mill-stones are made in Germany out of granite, by means of willow pegs being driven into holes thinly covered with water; this causes the willow to act by capillary expansion, forcing the mill-stones of the required size out of the rock.
It is of the utmost importance that the nature of moss and lichen generally should be well studied before constructing sewers, &c., where vegetable matter exists near water.
Was it by similar means that the ancient Egyptians and inhabitants of Arabia Petræa cut from the solid rock those vast blocks, in effecting which they do not seem to have availed themselves of any modern mechanical contrivances?
The ferment, that is, the substances in a state of fermentation and capable of acting on all fermentable bodies, and especially on complex organic compounds, as the blood, exist at all times in the air, but are as a matter of course greatly influenced by a variety of circumstances as regards their effects on man and other animals. It is proved by indubitable evidence that this morbific matter is as capable of entering the system when minute particles of it are diffused in the atmosphere as when it is directly introduced into the blood vessels by a wound. When diffused in the air, these noxious particles are conveyed into the system through the thin and delicate walls of the air-vesicles of the lungs in the act of respiration. The mode in which the air-vesicles are formed and disposed is such as to give to the human lungs an almost incredible extent of absorbing surface, while at every point of this surface there is a vascular tube ready to receive any substance imbibed by it and to carry it at once into the current of the circulation. Thus in certain seasons boils and carbuncles prevail to an alarming extent, and surgeons dare not operate lest they should lose their patients from erysipelas and inflammations, running rapidly into putrescence. In large hospitals the poisonous air in all probability is constantly present, attacking those who have been previously weakened by disease or wounds, or loss of blood; in other words, all those in whom from any circumstance (as by the depression of the vital powers) the complex organic compounds are held loosely together, and are therefore prepared to ferment or to fall into putrescence.
Note 4.—Anther.
This name is given in botany to the summit or top of the stamen containing the fertilizing fruit-producing dust.
Pollen is the fecundating dust or fine substance, like flour, meal, or fine bran.
Farina, contained in the anther of flowers and plants, which is dispersed on their stigma for impregnation, form a vegetable essence constituting the particular nature of a substance forming the flower existing in other plants of the same family or kind.
Spore or sporule in botany is that product of flowerless plants which performs the function of seeds.
These substances float in the atmosphere, and are the cause of the hay fever; and when they fall into water and are afterwards left upon mud they ferment, and being dried up by the sun they fly about with the spawn of animals.
Should seeds fly about with the pollen or farina in a state of decay and full of carbonic acid, the oxygen of the atmosphere, so essential to human beings, is diminished, and the pollen or seeds are inhaled into the lungs, and are thus exposed to the action of oxygen whilst circulating with the blood.
The result of an excess of carbon in the air is the growth of ferns on barren rocks, which ferns subsequently become coal.
The same cause will always produce the same results. When vegetable matters rise from a large surface of earth or mud (as from the newly-drained forty thousand acres of the lake of Haarlem), there are no plants there to inhale the carbonic acid, and to give out oxygen; but those seeds being rotten or in a state of ferment, the oxygen for the decomposition is drawn from the atmosphere alone, and human beings who breathe this malaria have fever; the atmosphere is tainted: miasms of carbon with hydrogen gas (the lightest thing known) fly about, carrying them to points where sulphurous gases may find them a resting-place on mud and shallow waters: these give rise to fever, cholera, plague, and to all zymotic diseases.
Note 5.—Algæ, or Sea-weeds of the Mediterranean Sea.
These were examined by Doctor Derbes, Professor of Sciences, and Captain Solier, of Marseilles, and the result of their researches was published in the supplement of the Comtes Rendus of the Académie des Sciences, in answer to a prize essay proposed by the Academy in 1847. Nothing can exceed the botanical truthfulness of the memoir presented by these gentlemen to the Academy. After a careful examination of the substances resulting from the mass of decayed sea-weed in the delta of the various rivers which flow into the Mediterranean Sea, they arrived at the conclusion that the product is the cause of fevers, by generating a malaria which the vital powers are unequal to meet. Thus the cholera existed at Marseilles in 1850; all knowledge of the extent of its destructive ravages was withheld from the public; and the truth of this is in some measure proved by the readiness with which the Board of Health recommend the quarantine of ten to fifteen days, when it was reported that the plague or cholera existed at Tripoli, Sicily, and Sardinia.—July, 1858.
Note 6.—The Marseilles Board of Health and Quarantine.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “TIMES.”
Challice.
Sir,—The Board of Health of Marseilles are about to establish quarantine regulations of ten days’ and fifteen days’ duration at that port, because “a dreadful plague rages at Bengazzi, in Tripoli, and is extending along the coast to Alexandria.” Individuals are to be confined ten days, and in certain cases fifteen days. Letters are to be purified, &c., and some 1500 Piedmontese labourers are likely to be disturbed and thrown out of work if the proposed quarantine regulations are established. And so this is the sum total of sanitary experience for the last ten years! The French authorities saw all quarantine regulations broken down during the Crimean war; in fact, joined the British in abolishing a quarantine at Smyrna, at Galipoli, at Constantinople, at Sinope, at Samsoon, at Trebizonde, at Malta, and even at Marseilles, and indeed at all other ports and places used by the transports and by the armies in alliance.
The armies certainly did not escape fever and cholera in their most terrible forms. The French, the British, and the Sardinians alike suffered, both in the field and in hospital, at the commencement. The British alone, however, by means of sanitary works and regulations, reduced cholera attacks to a minimum, and almost abolished fever. A few simple alterations to the sewers from the great hospitals on the Bosphorus and other places; ventilation—in many instances by simply breaking the top squares of windows; regular scavenging without and cleansing within the works of the hospitals, and the regular use of the lime-wash brush, emptied the hospital wards of fever patients. Surface cleansing at Balaklava, and regular scavenging both the shores and water of the harbour; covering the shallow graves with gravel and earth; scavenging the camp, and daily disinfecting all latrines, soon reduced the British army mortality below home or barrack life and service. The French neglected these things, or blundered in their execution, as the 5000 deaths per month in the hospitals on the Bosphorus, from hospital and camp fever alone, during the last three months of the war, testify. That certain diseases are contagious, such as scarlatina, measles, small-pox, &c., few will deny. That plague and cholera are equally contagious many doubt. Sanitary works and regulations of a very primitive and simple kind can certainly check the contagibility of cholera, as witness the experience in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Tynemouth, in London, in many other English towns and districts, and in the British hospitals and camps throughout the Crimean campaign. The lesson taught by experience ought to be this:—Let the Board of Health at Marseilles cleanse the town, cause all the foul rooms to be ventilated and lime-washed, disinfect the foul cesspools and sewage, and cut it off by “interception” from the harbour and docks, and they may bid defiance to plague from any quarter. It may be imported in silks, &c., but it will not spread. Let there be a sanitary staff for the harbour, and another for the town, armed with brooms, barrows, and lime-wash brushes, in place of sidearms and muskets, and persons may land at once to go about their business, and merchandize may be forwarded to its destination without fear of consequences. During periods of epidemics there can be cholera without dirt; improper food and mental and bodily exhaustion may bring on isolated cases; but to have cholera rampant there must be numbers of human beings fouling air, earth, and water, and habitually living contrary to known sanitary laws and entirely neglecting sanitary precautions.
Civil Engineer.
August 14, 1858.
Note 7.—Mud, Water, and Air.
The presence of water and a suitable temperature are indispensable conditions of the oxidizing process of decay, just as they are necessary to putrefaction and fermentation. The sides of ponds and ditches being covered by water during the winter months, in the spring the air becoming warmer and drier, the water diminishes, the decay of vegetable seeds, plants, and all woody fibres enter now into putrefaction, communicating the process to each other, and by the transmission of decomposition from one particle to another, a great number of plants give out various gases to the atmosphere while decaying upon mud, rise into the air, meeting other gases, and then, floating about, they compose and decompose each other. Hence the bad odour from the mud-banks of the Thames, near the outfalls of the sewage.
Note 8.
I have known fevers cured by a change of the sleeping room from the south to the north aspect, and still more readily by removing from one side of the street to the other. All should avoid dwelling near canals, ponds, or ditches habitually covered with a white froth; this is formed, in fact, of gases rising through humus swimming on the water, and contains living beings as well as fermentable substances.
It is important to men who work and sleep in the same house to have the day or working-rooms to the north, where the sun never enters, and to sleep in a room to the east or south. A room to the west, looking to the west, is not healthy, particularly in summer months, being the hottest in the evening. Gnats, moths, and flies collect there, and are at least harassing, if not hurtful, particularly to infants.
No person not a native of a marshy country should travel overland in the evening; dew causes a strong action in vapours, mists, &c. Invalids and soldiers after fatigue, should halt in the daytime, and march in the evening, to avoid being chilled.
Note 9.
A sure remedy against the malaria of ditches, ponds, &c., is to fill the water-courses with water; never suffer them to be so far dried up that the spawn of living creatures may attach itself to the sides of grass, bushes, &c., and afterwards to dry and spread about like the seeds of flowers, in the environs. The mud which is left exposed to the air gives out, on drying, various gases, which being mixed with the fossils of the mud, contaminate the air, and are breathed by the people in the neighbourhood.
A circular drain, having a double current, well understood by the hydraulic engineers of Holland, is the kind of drain I prefer.
THE END.
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