Remedies for Overcrowding
The final question is, What can be done to prevent overcrowding of houses and of persons in the house?
I freely admit that very little can be done in big towns, and people must be left to judge for themselves as to whether they will allow their children to run the extra risk of death, crippling disease, or defective development, inseparable from life in a crowded city. The statistics of the Registrar-General (i.e. the Annual Summary and the Decennial Supplement) show clearly what these risks are, but it is necessary to add that some of the local statistics manifest at times an undue desire to minimise the mortality of the district from which they emanate.
A great metropolitan city like London, concerning which we are educated from our cradles to utter big boasts, exercises an enormous influence on public opinion, but it is perfectly clear that she is a dangerous model to follow in the matter of house-construction.
I call to mind the case of a great London builder who bought a country mansion in a park. He was a very able man, but when he carried out some alterations and additions to his new house he found it impossible to cast away his town-bred ideas, and accordingly built underground kitchens and coal cellars, and had the coals put into his cellar through a plate in the pavement just outside the drawing-room window. He had been so long accustomed to build houses with a minimum of area, that when he had an unlimited space at his disposal he failed to utilise or appreciate the advantages of such a boon.
Country places should be careful to avoid the adoption, as by-laws, of regulations originally framed with the idea of mitigating the horrors of the London slums. With regard to these regulations, it must be remembered that 'the trail of the Cockney is over them all,' and it has been shown that regulations, especially as to space round dwellings, which may be beneficial in the Seven Dials become mischievous suggestions when printed and circulated as the by-laws of a country district. It seems almost incredible that the Local Government Board should sanction the adoption of some of these by-laws by country communities.
The exigencies of space in London have led to the construction of underground offices, with the result that at least a tenth of the inhabitants of modern London are cave-dwellers; and in the by-laws from which I have quoted I find no attempt to penalise, or in any way to restrict, the perpetration of similar barbarities in the country.
If there be underground 'offices,' the drains of the house will leave it at a level of some 10 feet below the ground level, and the public sewer must be at least 11 feet underground, and the laying of sewers at such a depth is relatively expensive. As there are extra charges for high level water service, ought there not to be similar extra charges for low level drain service?
The great blot on modern sanitary legislation is the entire absence of any encouragement for the sanitary well-doers.
Sanitary legislation is founded on a basis of mischievous lop-sided socialism, in which the sanitary well doer is heavily taxed for the support of the jerry-builder, and is called upon to pay for all the shortcomings of the negligent and filthy.
Encouragement ought to be given to the man who builds a house with ample curtilage; and if such house be removed from all other dwellings by a distance equal to its height, he ought to be freed from the restrictions of harassing by-laws, and the despotic control of district surveyors whose credentials are often of the flimsiest, and whose ideas are stereotyped.
The idea which was prevalent a few years ago, that open spaces should be taxed at 'site value' is, one must hope, dead. Its obviously mischievous tendency needs no comment.
The only equitable basis for calculating the rateable value of a house for sanitary purposes is the cubic capacity, because, as a broad rule, the bigger the house the greater is the amount of work which it throws upon streets and sewers. The 'grounds' or 'curtilage' of a house ought to be very leniently taxed, although one must admit that streets and pavements ought to be paid for in proportion to house and ground frontage.
If a man spend money in beautifying his house without enlarging it, this ought not to entail an increase in rateable value for sanitary purposes. Such beautifyings are good for trade in a proper sense, and ought not in the interests of the community to be checked.
The rich man who has a fancy for a fine house has already had his income handsomely taxed, and it seems scarcely just or wise that he should be further directly taxed for spending his income.
Horses if of similar dimensions used to be equally taxed, and no distinction was made between the 'Thoroughbred' and the 'Screw,' which was quite equitable, because the owner of the former had already paid income tax.
I have been at some pains to point out that in country or semi-rural districts, where it is possible to give a house a decent curtilage or small garden, it is easy for a householder to make the sanitation of his dwelling quite independent of the local authority. In fact, the householder is able if he be so minded to make his sanitation complete, and to finish, on his own premises and to his own profit, that 'circulation of organic matter' which is a law of Nature, and the only true basis upon which the science of sanitation can possibly stand firm.
The householder can do piecemeal what no public authority has ever succeeded in doing wholesale, albeit that millions of money have been wasted in silly attempts.
Why should not the householder be encouraged? One method of encouragement would be to allow him to pay for water by meter, if he be so minded, exactly as he pays for gas. Such a measure as this would effectually solve the water difficulty everywhere.
On referring to p. [113] it will be seen that in 1873 I paid 6l. 8s. per annum for water. As there were no fixed baths and washing was not done at home, I reckon the water consumption was not more than seventeen gallons per head per diem.
In 1873 my household averaged nine persons, so that the yearly consumption of water was not more than 9 × 17 × 365 = 55,845 gallons (say 56,000), which, at 6l. 8s., means about 2s. 3d. per 1,000 gallons.
In 1896 I reckon that my household averaged four and a half persons, and that the yearly consumption of water was 28,000 gallons, which, at 7l. 10s. 6d., means very nearly 5s. 6d. per 1,000. Suppose that this house stood in the country, and that it were possible to adopt dry methods of sanitation, this would reduce the water consumption by about one-third, say to 12 gallons per head, or 19,000 gallons a year for the household of 1896. At a shilling per 1,000 gallons, which I believe is a fair price, the water bill would fall to 19s.
At a shilling per 1,000 gallons, twelve gallons per diem, or 4,380 gallons per year, would cost 4s. 4d. per head, or a penny per head per week. If in a country place the rain-water were stored the annual cost for water would be still less.
It may be well to add the twelve gallons per diem allows for a daily sponge bath, and that on this quantity of water absolute domestic and personal cleanliness can be maintained. An excess of water is a pure luxury, and it should be remembered that sewage difficulties are largely proportionate to the amount of water which has to be dealt with.
The supply of water by meter would effectually check waste, which no by-laws and regulations can effect; and if the water mains were frozen, the water companies, very properly, would be the chief losers, and the householder would not be called upon to pay for that which he had never been supplied with.
In the matter of water 'enough is as good as a feast,' and it is idle to imagine that the public health will be improved by a reckless extravagance in this or any other direction.
Finally, is it not possible to consider the sanitary well-doer in the matter of sewerage rates? As it is, the householder who perfects and completes the sanitation of his house on his own premises, very possibly pays more than he who throws the whole of the trouble and expense on the public authority.
He who takes trouble in this matter is regarded as a fool by the majority, who say, 'He has got to pay rates; why should he bother.'
That the burden of public authorities and the pollution of rivers would be very much lessened by the recognition of the well-doer, there can be no doubt.
In considering the rating of a house for sewerage works it is clear that every sink, W.C., bath or gully discharging its contents into a public sewer ought to be charged, and such charge should be progressive; thus, if 5s. were paid for one such discharge hole, 7s. 6d. should be paid for the second, 10s. for the third, 12s. 6d. for the fourth, and so on. In this way a cottage with one kitchen sink only would pay 5s., but a mansion with, say, 10 sinks, baths, and W.C., would pay 8l. 2s. 6d. Such charges are analogous to the charges made by water companies, which are higher for the better class of house. If this or something like this were done, the fixed charges on the house would produce a considerable sum, which would go far towards paying the municipal bills for scavenging and sewering. The balance would have to be raised by a rate on the buildings themselves, which rate should be in proportion to the cubic contents of the buildings, without reference to their curtilage, because large curtilage tends to improve the public health more than all the clauses of all the sanitary Acts that ever were devised.
The cubic contents should alone be considered in making assessments for rates. If a man spend money in making his house more wholesome without increasing its size, and thereby increases its value, it is clearly not in the interests of the public health that he should be fined by the sanitary authority for so doing. Nevertheless this is done daily.
That a man should pay for so much water as he uses and for no more, and that he should pay the municipality for personal services directly in proportion to those services, seem to be two propositions so simple and so equitable, and so absolutely fundamental for all just dealing, that one cannot be surprised at the trouble which follows the neglect of them.
Great as are the sanitary evils connected with overcrowding, it is probable that the moral and social harm which results from it is infinitely more important; and yet we find that our modern socialistic legislation does everything to encourage and nothing to discourage this greatest of sanitary and social ills.
It is strange that the cubic contents of a building should be a factor which is rigorously excluded from consideration when rating and building regulations are being considered. It seems to the writer to be obvious that it is by far the most important factor, and one which cannot be neglected if our municipal regulations are to have any permanence. The Metropolitan Building Act we have seen puts a premium on large buildings, by abolishing all restrictions as to curtilage, provided the building runs from street to street or from street to 'open space,' and never considers the enormous dangers of these large buildings in relation to epidemic disease and fire.
Every country place would do well to enact that—
- (1) The height of a house shall in no case be greater than the width of the street upon which it abuts.
- (2) Every house shall have a minimum private curtilage upon the ground level, and entirely free from buildings which shall equal the cubic contents of the house divided by 50.
In the second paragraph I have chosen 50 for my divisor, because the average width of a street and the average height of the four-storeyed house are not far from 50 feet.
Let us take the case of an ordinary four-storeyed house (with no basement) having an area of 20 × 50 and 50 feet high. Then the curtilage would be (20 × 50 × 50) / 50 = 1,000; i.e., the house must have a curtilage exactly equal to the area occupied by the building—a back yard probably, 50 feet deep and 20 feet wide. If in addition to the four storeys there be a basement of 12,500 cubic feet, then an additional 250 square feet of curtilage would be required, and the builder who is tempted to overcrowd would be constantly checked by the price he has to pay for his obligatory curtilage.
The high price of building land is largely due to there being practically no restriction as to the cubic contents permissible on a certain area.
If we take the smaller two-storeyed cottages, having a width of 15 feet, a depth of 25, and a height of 20 feet, then the curtilage would be (15 × 25 × 20) / 50 = 150, which is the minimum of the 'model' by-laws. If the builder put a basement to this cottage of 3,750 cubic feet, he would have to provide additional 75 square feet of curtilage, and thus a check would be put upon underground dwellings and high buildings which obstruct the light and air. On the other hand, there need be no restrictions on the height or cubic contents of any building provided its curtilage be ample.
If it were possible for the first house considered to have a height of 100 feet in addition to its basement, then, the cubic contents being 112,500 feet, the curtilage would have to be 2,250 square feet, and the house and curtilage combined would occupy some 3,250 square feet, or rather less than 1⁄13 of an acre.
It is probable that a comprehensive rule of this kind would satisfactorily keep builder and site speculator in order, while it placed a minimum of restriction on the originality and fancy of architect and builder.
Builders of houses wholly detached from other houses or boundaries by a distance equal to the height of the house should be allowed to escape altogether from the harassing 'model' by-laws and the tyranny of the surveyor.
I would say finally—
1. That overcrowding is the greatest of all sanitary evils, and far and away the greatest of all moral evils.
2. That whatever increases the cost of the dwelling inevitably increases overcrowding.
3. That overcrowding is facilitated by modern methods of sanitation.
4. That, unless the crowding of houses be prevented, great schemes of sewerage and water-supply will eventually make the health of a district worse instead of better.
5. That 'open spaces' and public gardens do not compensate for the lack of light and air in the dwelling or of curtilage around it.
What one may call municipal luxuries are not permissible if they permanently increase the cost of the dwelling.
If such luxuries be self-supporting they may be permissible, but it is clear to my mind that, as a rule, they should be left to be provided by private munificence or voluntary public subscription. They ought never to be paid for out of the rates.
The avowed policy of many municipalities is to practise a maximum of extravagance, in the belief that such extravagance benefits the poor, and these vicarious philanthropists receive a willing support from those who are directly interested in such schemes.
6. That if great schemes for sewerage, or water supply, or the provision of open spaces, be effected by loans which increase the rates for long terms, and thereby permanently increase the cost of the dwelling, they will inevitably lead to a deterioration in the public health and morals. Some of these schemes facilitate overcrowding, while increased rates, by raising the cost of the dwelling, compel it.
7. Municipal ostentation is wholly indefensible. To build palatial offices costing a million and more of money, and thereby saddle the ratepayers with another loan, is indefensible. To buy a cocked hat for the mayor out of the rates (as did a less ambitious municipality) is equally indefensible, and serves no useful purpose except to raise a laugh.
We have been long accustomed to hear that our chief sanitary necessity in this world is pure water. This would be quite true if we were fish. But it is obvious that the purity of the air we breathe is of far greater importance than the purity of the water we drink, seeing that we must take a draught of air about twenty times a minute, while many of us do not take a draught of raw water from week's end to week's end.
If the huge death-rate of the Strand were due to impure water, we may be sure that there would be no lack of discussion thereupon; but as it is due to overcrowding, and the filthiness of the air consequent upon overcrowding, we hear nothing about it. To make any serious attempt to check overcrowding would interfere with trade, and therefore it is considered silly and futile to discuss such a matter. Any man who supposes that considerations of hygiene will be allowed to interfere with trade, is, I think, deceived. At all events, I have no such belief.
My sole object in discussing these matters is to warn country places against blindly following the lead of London in sanitary matters.
CHAPTER V
THE CIRCULATION OF ORGANIC MATTER[3]
It is quite impossible to define 'organic matter,' or to indicate the line, if there be any, between organic and inorganic.
Organic matter is the material of which living things are made. When a chemist analyses anything which is the product of life, whether vegetable or animal, he often speaks of his incombustible residue or ash as 'inorganic matter,' but this is clearly an arbitrary use of the term, for this incombustible residue has formed an indispensable part of one living thing, and may in due time be incorporated with other living things as something which they cannot do without.
It may well be that everything of which we have knowledge (even including the igneous rocks) has at one time or another formed part of a living organism, and it is certain that a large proportion of the commoner chemical elements may form a part, more or less indispensable, of the bodies and framework of plants or animals.
Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, iron, sodium, potassium and calcium seem to be indispensable to almost every living thing. Many more of the elements are constantly found in some organisms, while others, such as lead, mercury, silver, &c., may be temporarily incorporated with living bodies.
We shall deal mainly with those elements which are pre-eminently mobile, which are constantly changing and exchanging, combining and separating, and which are readily combustible. For practical purposes one might, indeed, use the terms 'organic' and 'combustible' to signify the same thing.
With regard to solid matter, the power of readily circulating implies a readiness of combustibility, but it must be remembered that there is no hard line between combustible and incombustible. This is a matter of temperature, and many things which are incombustible here are said to be blazing in the sun.
The combustion of organic matter may take place slowly, or with moderate rapidity, or with explosive violence.
When we burn coal, which is a vegetable product, we find that the carbon and hydrogen escape as carbonic acid and water, accompanied by nitrogen, sulphuric acid, and volatile hydrocarbons. The residue consists mainly of silica and alumina, which are removed from the furnace in the form of clinker and ash. The water ultimately returns to the earth in the form of rain or dew; the carbonic acid is ultimately absorbed by green plants, and, by stimulating the growth of these, helps to furnish us with more combustible material; while the residue is almost a waste product. Thus, in this example we find that the carbon and watery vapour readily 'circulate,' while the residue can only do so after a long interval of time, and is practically lost. The volatile hydrocarbons and sulphuric acid, being poisonous to herbage, are a source of practical loss rather than gain.
Let us take next the case of an animal, which is really a living furnace, browsing in a field; as it browses we may often see the breath, which is the smoke of this furnace, laden with carbonic acid and water, escaping from its mouth and nostrils, and it is probable that the green leaves of the herbage absorb this carbonic acid almost as soon as it escapes, and, appropriating the carbon, return oxygen to the animal to help its respiration and combustion. The animal as it eats continues to grow and increase in bulk and value, whereas the artificial furnace in which the coal is burnt tends steadily to wear out and decrease in value. As it browses and grows, the droppings of the animal nourish the herbage which here and there, by patches of more vigorous growth and deeper green, afford sure evidence of the value of these waste products.
In this arrangement there is no waste, for both the animal and the herbage, by a process of mutual exchange and the circulation of organic matter, increase in value.
Not only is there no waste, but, strange as it may seem, there is a positive gain, with no loss whatever. The furnace and the fuel are both increased! This increase can only be apparent, and not real, for it is well known that although we may alter the form of matter, we can add nothing to and subtract nothing from the sum total of the world.
One would say that this apparent increase is due to the stimulating effect of the excreta upon the soil, which enables us to draw something extra from that inexhaustible storehouse of plant-food and water, and enables the animal to use these materials, instead of allowing them to drain to the springs, and so find their way to the sea. We know that a far greater proportion of the rainfall percolates through barren soil than through soil bearing crops. If this be so, there is a practical increase of the land at the expense of the water.
Again, we must remember that our knowledge of the sources of the gases of the atmosphere is not complete. It may be that all the oxygen of the air is furnished by the green leaves of plants, and all the carbonic acid by processes of respiration and combustion, but we are by no means sure of this. Of the sources of the atmospheric nitrogen we know nothing. Now it is certain that much of the carbon of the atmosphere is appropriated by the plants, and much of the oxygen by the animals. If among the herbage there be plants of clover, it is now certain that much of the atmospheric nitrogen will be drawn into the soil to nourish these plants and generally to increase their fertility. Whether the return of oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen is, in the long run, equal to the intake we cannot tell.
When, however, we ponder upon the gradual increase of vegetable soil or humus with which the bare rocks have been clothed in the course of ages, it is almost impossible not to come to the conclusion that the humus, and with it the fertility of the soil, has steadily increased at the expense of the sea on the one hand, and, possibly, of the atmosphere on the other. To put the matter in the form of question and in other terms, 'Does the Lithosphere increase at the expense of the Atmosphere and the Hydrosphere?' Does the land increase at the expense of sea and air? Be this as it may, it seems certain that by scrupulous return to the soil of all that comes out of it the resources of Nature are made increasingly available for the benefit of man.
When organic matter is mixed with water, a process of putrefaction and fermentation is started, and the organic matter, instead of undergoing oxidation, is reduced, and among the commoner products of this process are ammonia with sulphuretted hydrogen and marsh-gas, which are both combustible. These processes furnish us with other combustible matters, among the commonest of which are the alcohols, the familiar products of fermentation.
It is interesting to note the tendency of organic matter, when mixed with water, to give rise to explosive and combustible products. Explosions in cesspools and sewers have occurred many times. When wet hay is stored in stack it catches fire. When we stir the mud at the bottom of a pond or river, bubbles of combustible marsh-gas rise to the surface. The coal measures are due to the storing under water of semi-aquatic plants which have been preserved by being silted up, and we know that coal is full of olefiant gas, marsh-gas, sulphuretted hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which are all combustible, and that the carbonaceous residue, charged with volatile and combustible hydrocarbons, forms the chief fuel of the civilised world. Peat is formed in ways analogous to that of coal, and the so-called mineral oils are certainly the products of organic matter which has been silted up.
These subterranean stores of combustibles, all of organic origin, are, as we know, prodigious in quantity. Nobody can predict the time which it will take to exhaust the coal measures of the world, and we know for a fact that the sacred fires of Baku on the Caspian, fed by subterranean reservoirs of naphtha, have been burning for centuries.
When we see the end of a tin of 'preserved meat' bulged, we know that the gas-forming organisms have been at work within, and when the bed of the lower reaches of the Mississippi rises as a small mud mountain, spluttering with carburetted hydrogen, we know that analogous forces have been in operation. It seems, indeed, to be a law of Nature that the ultimate destiny of organic matter is to 'circulate,' and that if it does not do so quietly, as in the ordinary processes of nutrition in plants and animals, it merely bides its time, and ultimately attains its end with more or less destructive violence.
Nitre (nitrate of potash or nitrate of soda) is an organic product, and sulphur is an essential constituent of all or nearly all organisms. Of the three ingredients of gunpowder, two (charcoal and saltpetre) are, it is certain, of exclusively organic origin, and the third, sulphur, may be so also.
All the common combustibles with which we are familiar are certainly of organic origin, and one is almost forced to the conclusion that in this world life must have preceded combustion. If we are to explain what has been by what is, such a conclusion is irresistible. Are we quite sure that volcanoes, which are seldom far from the sea, are not fed by old deposits of organic matter which has collected in the primeval ocean, and, like the more recent coal measures, have been silted up?
What has been the destiny of the protoplasm of the countless animals and plants which are found in geologic strata? What part have ancient microbes had in the formation and disruption of the successive layers of which this earth is formed? These are questions which force themselves upon the mind, but which I will not attempt to answer. This biological view of the cosmogony which subjects the world, equally with all that is upon it, to the laws of development, evolution, and decay, does not, I believe, present so many difficulties as might at first sight appear.
Omne vivum ex vivo is a law of Nature, and all organic bodies spring from organic antecedents. Organic matter is our capital in this world, and the more frequently we can turn it over, and the more quickly and efficiently we can make it circulate, the more frequent will be our dividends. If we burn organic matter we may get a good dividend of energy, but nothing further is to be expected. The construction of the furnace involves an outlay of capital, which steadily diminishes as the furnace wears out by frequent use. If we burn organic matter merely to be rid of it, we spend our money for the sole purpose of dissipating our capital. The function of fire is to destroy and sterilise.
If we mix organic matter with large quantities of water, we have to encounter all the evils and annoyance of putrefaction, and if, when so mixed, we send it to the sea, we have no material gain of any kind. We spend our money for the purpose of dissipating our capital.
We may place the water containing the organic matter upon the land, and in tropical countries this is done, with excellent effect, for the production of rice, a semi-aquatic plant, which, according to Professor Georgeson, Professor of Agriculture in the Imperial University of Tokio, is said to prefer its nitrogen in the form of ammonia. The same authority states that nitrification does not take place under water, and careful experiments carried out at Tokio show that sulphate of ammonia is a much better manure for irrigated rice than nitrate of soda.
In our damp climate sewage farming has proved a dismal failure, and the difficulties seem to increase with the quantity of water which has to be dealt with. Excess of water drowns the humus, and nitrification cannot go on in a soil the pores of which are closed by excess of moisture.
The living earth, teeming with aërobic microbes, must be allowed to breathe. It needs for this purpose a certain amount (about 30 per cent.) of moisture; but it stands drowning no better than a man does, and if it be drowned, agricultural failure is inevitable.
If we carefully return to the upper layers of the humus, in which air and microbes exist in plenty, the residue of everything which we extract from it, we inevitably increase the thickness of the humus and its fertility. Our capital increases, and our dividends increase and recur with a frequency which depends upon the climate.
With thrifty and high cultivation it may, indeed, prove profitable to compensate defects of climate by the use of glass and artificial heat.
The part played in the economy of Nature by fungi and bacteria—the new learning of the last half-century—is an addition to human knowledge which is destined to revolutionise our views of many natural phenomena. It has already exercised enormous propulsive power on human thought, and has stimulated our imagination scarcely less than when, to use the words of Froude, 'the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the universe.'
This knowledge has provided us with a new world, peopled with organisms in numbers which, like the distances of the astronomers and the periods of the geologists, are really unthinkable by the human mind. Their variety also, both in form and function, is, for practical purposes, infinite.
When, with the help of the many inventions of the optician and the dyer, we catch a glimpse of things which a few years back were 'undreamt of in our philosophy,' and when we reflect that these organisms are certainly the offspring of 'necessity,' and are probably mere indications of infinities beyond, we cannot be too thankful for the flood of light which these discoveries have shed upon the enormity of human ignorance.
The lower animals and the lower vegetable organisms (fungi and bacteria) co-operate in a remarkable way in the circulation of organic matter.
In the autumn the gardener, with a view to what is called 'leaf mould,' sweeps the dead leaves into a heap, where they are exposed to air and rain. This heap when thus treated gets hot, and last autumn I found that the temperature of such a heap had risen in the course of a week or so to 104° F., and remained at a temperature considerably above that of the surrounding air during the whole winter. On turning it over after a month or so one found in it a large number of earthworms and endless fungoid growths visible to the naked eye, and one felt sure that it was swarming with countless millions of bacteria, invisible except to the highest powers of the microscope. In the beginning of March this heap, much reduced in size, was spread loosely over a patch of ground which was previously dug. If one examined that ground to-day one would scarcely recognise the structure of leaves, and in a few weeks more it will have become nothing but ordinary garden mould, and anything planted in it will grow with vigour. This is a familiar everyday fact.
We know also that noisome filth spread over a field by the farmer in the autumn or winter loses its offensiveness in a few days, and by the spring neither our eyes nor noses give us any clue to the cause of the fertility of the field which is covered with ordinary 'mould.' This process of 'humification' is largely due to earthworms and other earth dwellers, which pass the earth repeatedly through their bodies, and in doing so reduce it to a very fine powder. I have examined worm castings picked off a lawn, and which, after being slowly dried, have been gently sifted through muslin. Those who have never examined a worm casting in this way will be interested to know of what an impalpable dust the greater part is composed, and will also note the considerable size of the pieces of flint and grit which the animal has used in its living mill, and which have been separated by the muslin sieve.
These castings are full of microbes, and those who will take the trouble to scatter the smallest conceivable pinch of this impalpable dust upon a sterilised potato, after the manner and with all the precautions familiar to bacteriologists, will obtain an abundant and varied growth of bacteria and moulds, which will completely baffle their powers of enumeration and discrimination.
The greatest hindrance in the bacterial examination of the soil is this embarras de richesses, which makes the isolation of different species a matter of extreme difficulty.
The bacteria exist in the soil in countless millions, but it must be remembered that they get fewer as we go deeper. The first few inches of the soil are, in the matter of bacterial richness, worth all the rest, and at a depth of five or six feet they appear to be almost non-existent. The practical lesson which we have to lay to heart in applying this knowledge is that the upper layers of the soil are the potent layers in bringing about the circulation of organic matters, and that if we wish to hasten this process we must be careful to place our organic refuse near the surface, and not to bury it deeply, a process by which the circulation is inevitably delayed or practically prevented. If we bury it deeply we not only get no good, but we may get harm by poisoning our wells and springs.
It is the same with organic liquids. If these be poured on the surface, the 'living earth' (i.e. the humus stuffed with animal and microbial life) purges them of their organic matter, and transmits a relatively pure liquid to the deeper layers. If they be taken to the barren subsoil direct, as in underground sewers and cesspools, they escape the purifying action of air and aërobic organisms, and inevitably poison the water. Filthy liquids accumulating in cesspools and leaking under pressure to our wells have cost us health and money incalculable.
Liquids poured upon the surface cannot, owing to the crumby nature of the humus, exert any appreciable hydraulic pressure. This is a fact of huge importance in the practical management of organic refuse.
All effete organic matter instantly becomes the prey of animals and plants. The dead body of an animal teems with life—Le roi est mort, vive le roi. M. Mégnin, a skilled entomologist and a member of the French Academy of Medicine, has made a study, which is full of gruesome interest, of the living machinery which makes away with the bodies of animals not buried but exposed to the air and protected from beasts of prey.
M. Mégnin shows that the destruction of the animal is accomplished in no haphazard fashion, but that successive squadrons of insects are attracted by the successive stages of putrefaction.
The first squadron which arrives, sometimes before death and always before putrefaction, consists entirely of dipterous insects, house-flies and their relative, the blow-fly.
The next squadron are also diptera, and are said to be attracted by the commencing odour of decomposition. These squadrons use the carcase as a procreant cradle, and thus ensure the nourishment of the larvæ so soon as they are hatched. Amongst these flesh-seeking flies there are said to be specialists which prefer the flesh of particular animals.
The third squadron is attracted when the fat begins to undergo an acid fermentation. These consist of coleoptera and lepidoptera, beetles and butterflies, and among them is Dermestes Lardarius, the Bacon Beetle.
When the fats become cheesy the diptera reappear, and among them is Pyophila Casei, the fly which breeds jumpers in cheese, which is accompanied by a beetle, whose larvæ are connoisseurs in rancidity.
When the carcase becomes ammoniacal, black, and slimy, it is visited by a fifth squadron of flies and beetles.
And these are succeeded by the sixth squadron, consisting of acari or mites, whose function it is to dry up the moisture and reduce the carcase to a mummy-like condition.
The dried carcase proves attractive to the seventh squadron, consisting of beetles and moths, some of which are the familiar pests of the housewife, the furrier, and the keepers of museums. These animals gnaw the softer parts, such as ligaments, and leave nothing but a fine powder behind them, which is in fact their dung.
The last and eighth squadron consists solely of beetles, which clean up the débris, in the shape of dung, shells, pupa cases, &c., of the seven squadrons which have preceded them.
M. Mégnin, being an entomologist and not a bacteriologist, deals exclusively with the insects concerned in making away with a carcase, but it is evident that bacteria work hand in hand with them.
There are many other instances which may be quoted of the co-operation of fungi with other organisms, and it is only of late years that we have appreciated the fact of symbiosis, or the living together of two organisms for the mutual benefit of each. This fact was first pointed out in so-called lichens, which are now shown to be complex bodies consisting of a fungus and an alga, living in symbiotic community for the mutual benefit of each.
It was next shown that the papilionaceous leguminosæ are unable to flourish without certain bacterial nodules which grow upon their roots, and by the instrumentality of which they can appropriate the nitrogen of the air, and thus the fact, familiar for centuries, that the leguminosæ leave the ground in a state of great fertility, while they are singularly independent of nitrogenous manures, has been explained.
But if the plants themselves are independent of dung, it is not so, apparently, with the symbiotic nodules, which seem to flourish far more vigorously in rich garden ground than they do in comparatively poor farm land. Thus Sir John Lawes has grown clover in a rich old garden for forty-two years, and has had luxuriant crops every year.
According to my own observation on the scarlet runner bean these nodules are more plentiful upon the roots which grow superficially than upon those which run deeply.
Symbiosis is observable in many plants other than the leguminosæ, and it is certain that many of our big forest trees depend for their nourishment upon fungi which grow upon their roots.
All animals appear to be symbiotic, for we all carry about millions of microbes, which must fairly be regarded as junior partners in our economy, and which we cannot do without. The microbe which has been chiefly studied—the Bacterium Coli commune—appears to be essential for certain digestive processes which go on in the intestines while we live; and when we die, this microbe is active in starting the dead body upon that cycle of events which is one form of the 'Circulation of Organic Matter.'
Now it is certain that the dung of all animals swarms with bacteria and allied organisms when it leaves the intestines, and it seems highly probable that excrement carries with it the biological machinery which is necessary for its dissolution and ultimate humification.
My friend, Mr. George Murray, F.R.S., the keeper of the Botanical Department of the British Museum, whose learning in fungology is well known, has kindly furnished me with an elaborate list of 139 genera of fungi which flourish on excrement.
Of these 139 genera, Mr. Murray has tabulated no less than 628 species which are known to flourish on excrement.
Of the 628 species, 226 have been found on the dung of more than one genus of animals, but no less than 402 species of fungi are peculiar to the excrement of only one genus of animals.
Of these 402 species of fungi, 91 are peculiar to the dung of the ox; 78 to the horse; 68 to the hare and rabbit; 30 to the dog; 25 to the sheep; 28 to birds; 21 to man; 16 to the mouse; 9 to the deer; 7 to the pig; 7 to the wolf; and 22 to other animals.
This search for fungi in excrement is necessarily incomplete. In Mr. Murray's list it is evident that the greatest number of species has been found in the dung of animals which are domesticated and common, and which offer facilities to the fungologist. The numbers are startling, but when we consider that the dung of every living thing which crawls or burrows, or swims or flies, has properties which are peculiar to it, and which fit it to become the nidus of some peculiar fungoid or bacterial growth, the part played by fungi in the distribution and circulation of organic matter cannot be over-estimated.
The facts which have been recounted, and which seem to show that fungi and bacteria are necessary for the growth and development of even the highest plants and animals, and that fungi and animals are equally necessary for the dissolution of organic matter, point to the conclusion that the correlation of the biological forces in this world is no less exact than the correlation of the physical forces. The uniform composition of the atmosphere, except under special and local conditions, is a fact which tends in the same direction.
While it is impossible to over-estimate the debt which agriculture owes to chemistry, we have, nevertheless, learnt from the bacteriologist that there are biological problems underlying the question of fertility, and that a mere chemical estimation of the constituents of organic manure is insufficient, by itself, to fix its manurial value. It is by the agency of bacteria that organic matter is changed into nitrates and other soluble salts, which are absorbed by the roots of plants and serve to nourish them. This change only takes place provided the temperature and moisture are suitable and the ground be properly tilled. Drought and frost arrest the change, and excess of moisture, by closing the pores of the soil, does the same thing.
Organic manures are economical in the long run, because if the weather is adverse they bide their time until the advent of 'fine growing weather.' If one season prove unfavourable, a large amount of the organic matter remains in the soil to nourish the next crop. This is not the case when soluble chemical manures are used.
That it is necessary to put dung upon the ground if we are to maintain the fertility of the soil has been the experience of all peoples in every age.
Fig. 35.
I will now allude to a diagram (fig. [35]) which represents by a curve the yearly produce of barley, in bushels per acre, grown continuously on the same plots of ground for forty years, but with this difference, that one plot (represented by the upper curve) received 14 tons per annum per acre of farmyard manure, while the other, represented by the lower curve, has been unmanured continuously. This diagram has been constructed from figures given by Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry Gilbert in the 'Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland' for 1895. I have replaced fractions by the nearest whole figure. The fluctuations of both these curves are very great, and it will be noticed that they are exactly parallel to each other. This teaches us that weather is the most important factor in agricultural success, and shows the extreme danger to the farmer of 'placing all his eggs in one basket,' as has been done by the so-called farmers of the Far West, who have attempted to grow wheat only by the process of scratching the prairie, without returning any dung to the soil, and many of whom have been financially swamped by the first bad season.
Taking the average of the forty years, it will be found that the produce of the manured land averaged 49 bushels per acre per annum, while the unmanured land gave only 16½ bushels.
I might have added to the diagram a third curve showing the produce of that plot of ground which, of all those manured with artificials, gave the highest yield. The yield of this plot for the whole forty years averaged 46 bushels, or only 3 bushels short of the average yield of the plot treated with farmyard manure. If, however, we take the average yield of the three plots for each of the four decades comprising the forty years, the value of the organic matter becomes very manifest. Thus the yield for each decade was with
| Farmyard dung | 44·9 | 51·5 | 50·0 | 51·6 |
| Artificial manure | 48·7 | 49·4 | 42·8 | 41·5 |
| Unmanured | 22·2 | 17·5 | 13·7 | 12·6 |
It will be observed that the yield from artificial manuring only exceeded the yield from the farmyard plot in the first decade, when it showed an excess of 3·8 bushels. In the other three decades it was deficient by 2·1, 7·2, and 10·1 bushels.
The deficiency of the unmanured plot in each decade, as compared with the farmyard plot, was 22·7, 34·0, 37·3, and 39·0.
These figures are very convincing, and as practical agriculturists seem to be now agreed that farming is hopeless without an adequate amount of live-stock to furnish dung, no more need be said upon this head.
But is there no danger in using organic refuse, which may be infective and dangerous, as an application to the land? To this I should say emphatically 'No,' provided it be put in the upper layers of the soil, and the soil be tilled. Our organic refuse, when allowed to putrefy in water, and to trickle under pressure to our wells, or run direct into our sources of drinking-water, has turned millions of pounds into the pockets of members of my profession, but when rationally used as a top-dressing for the well-tilled soil it has never, that I am aware of, produced any harm.
I have tried to investigate this matter. Some five years ago I constructed a well five feet deep in the middle of a garden which is plentifully manured with all that is most loathsome to our senses. This well is lined to the very bottom with concrete pipes, further protected by an external coating of concrete; the junctions of the pipes are securely closed by cement, and there is a good parapet and efficient cover (see page [65] and figs. [22] and [23]).
Now no water can possibly enter the well, except through the bottom. The water in it is clear and bright, and since its construction no mud has collected on the bottom. The sides of the pipes also remain absolutely clean, so much so that when, in 1895, I showed this well to a party of scientific friends, some of them dropped a hint that it had possibly been scrubbed in honour of their visit. This, however, was not the case.
The water from this well has been examined three times chemically, with the result that it has been pronounced free from organic impurities, and three bacteriological examinations have been made, with the result of showing a bacterial purity which is quite exceptional. The last examination was made by Dr. Cartwright Wood in November 1895, and showed a very high degree of bacterial purity. The water was specially examined by Dr. Wood for the presence of Bacterium Coli commune, but with negative results. Dr. Wood writes: 'The results are exceedingly satisfactory, and I must admit surprised me very much.' A surface-well on this pattern has lately been constructed in a village near Andover, and the results, as far as the appearance of the well and water is concerned, seem to be entirely satisfactory.
When people live crowded together in cities, the difficulties connected with the cleaning of the houses are very great. After the invention of the steam-engine it was found possible to supply even the top floors of the highest houses with an ample supply of water. We accordingly abolished the scavenger, and adopted a complete system of water-carried sewage. In this way our houses have been cleansed, and our rivers and surface-wells have been fouled, and it is difficult to say whether at present there be a balance of advantage or disadvantage. We have had epidemics of cholera and of typhoid, and it is almost certain that there is no one here present but has suffered in some way or other from the 'drains.'
The greatest drawback of this system is the fact that it encourages overcrowding of houses on inadequate areas, and, unfortunately, it is this fact which has rendered the system so popular. With water under pressure there is no need to provide houses with any back-door or back-yard, and there is no inconvenience in having excessively high buildings. The speculative builder, who has been relieved of all responsibilities in connection with sewage and water supply, has abundantly used his opportunities, and the happy ground-landlord has sold his land at large prices per square foot. We are shutting out the light and air more and more from our cities, and the crowding in the streets is making locomotion in them difficult. This overcrowding is a serious matter, and I will show what it means in London by means of a table and diagrammatic plan of the sanitary areas of London, with the mortality figures in the years 1892 and 1893, as calculated by Mr. Shirley Murphy, after due correction for abnormalities of age and sex distribution.
This table and plan (p. [144]) shows at a glance that the mortality of London as a whole (taken as 1,000) is 14 or 15 per cent. higher than that of England and Wales, and that while some of the outlying districts, such as Hampstead, Lewisham, and Plumstead, have a mortality below that of England and Wales, the areas near the centre of London are all considerably above it; and some, such as the Strand, Holborn, St. George's-in-the-East, and Whitechapel, have a mortality as high as that of the worst manufacturing towns.
The danger of overcrowding is well shown by the explosive outburst of small-pox in Marylebone in 1894.
MORTALITY FIGURES
(Figures in small type show the population of the Sanitary Areas)
DR=Corrected Death Rate 1892 MF=Mortality Figures
| DR | MF | ||
| Hampstead | 14·2 | 657 | |
| Lewisham | } | 15·7 | 727 |
| Plumstead | } | ||
| Wandsworth | 16·8 | 778 | |
| Hackney | 18·1 | 838 | |
| England and Wales | 19·0 | 880 | |
| Paddington | } | 19·3 | 894 |
| St. George's, Hanover Square | } | ||
| Battersea | } | 19·4 | 898 |
| Kensington | } | ||
| Greenwich | 19·7 | 912 | |
| Camberwell | 19·9 | 921 | |
| Islington | 20·1 | 931 | |
| St. James's, W. | 20·2 | 935 | |
| Lambeth | 20·7 | 958 | |
| Hammersmith | 20·8 | 963 | |
| Fulham | 20·9 | 968 | |
| London (entire) | 21·6 | 1000 | |
| Chelsea | 22·0 | 1019 | |
| Rotherhithe | 22·2 | 1028 | |
| Woolwich | 22·8 | 1056 | |
| Poplar | 23·2 | 1074 | |
| St. Marylebone | 23·4 | 1083 | |
| St. Pancras | 23·5 | 1088 | |
| Mile End | 23·8 | 1102 | |
| Shoreditch | 23·9 | 1106 | |
| Bethnal Green | 24·1 | 1115 | |
| Bermondsey | 24·3 | 1125 | |
| City of London | 25·3 | 1171 | |
| Newington | 25·5 | 1181 | |
| St. Giles | 26·2 | 1213 | |
| Westminster | 26·6 | 1231 | |
| St. Saviour, Southwark | 26·7 | 1236 | |
| Whitechapel | 26·8 | 1241 | |
| Clerkenwell | } | 27·5 | 1273 |
| St. George's, Southwark | } | ||
| Limehouse | 27·8 | 1287 | |
| St. Martin's in the Fields | 27·9 | 1292 | |
| St. Olave's | 28·1 | 1301 | |
| St. Luke's | 28·2 | 1306 | |
| St. George's East | 28·8 | 1333 | |
| Holborn | 29·7 | 1375 | |
| Strand | 33·4 | 1546 |
Fig. [36] represents part of the Asylums Board Map, in which each case of notified small-pox is shown by a black dot. This map shows that the outbreak was limited to two spots, one in Portland Town and one round Nightingale Street, Edgware Road, where the density of population, according to Mr. Charles Booth, is over 300 persons to the acre.
Fig. 36.
Other maps published by the Asylums Board show that whereas the air-borne contagium, diphtheria, was confined more or less to the crowded districts, enteric fever, which is a water-borne contagium, was evenly spread over the whole parish. It need hardly be said that the enforcement of vaccination, notification, and isolation, is important in proportion to the density of population. The working of the sanitary laws is a great expense to the ratepayers. I find it stated, for instance, in the report of the Asylums Board, that for the removal of the 260 small-pox patients from Marylebone the ambulances travelled nearly twenty miles for each patient, and collectively 5,200 miles, or about the distance from here to Bombay. Overcrowding is not cheap, and I find, by a reference to the report of St. Marylebone, that whereas in 1871 that parish, of about 1,500 acres, and with a diminishing population, could be 'run' for about 660l. a day, it now costs about 1,100l. per day. It is right to add that the parish has no control over a great part of the expenditure, but, nevertheless, 440l. per diem is a fair sum to place upon the shrine of progressive municipalism.
If infectious disease occurs in our houses we have only to notify, and the parish does the rest. We have put a premium on fever, and the lucky man whose house is visited by a mild scarlatina is rewarded by having his family maintained for six weeks at the public expense, and his whitewashing done by the parish. If, on the return of a child from the hospital, another child catches the disease, he can recover damages.
The Asylums Board is probably the most pauperising institution ever conceived, but we are such cowards in the presence of disease that financial and moral considerations have but little weight, provided the unclean be removed.
Another great drawback to the water-carriage system of sewage is the increasing difficulty with regard to water supply. Our needs per head per diem in the matter of water have gradually increased to something like forty gallons, which many experts consider to be none too much. In London the air is so foul that rain-water is valueless for domestic use, and the water of the surface wells is too poisonous to drink, because we have neglected what I believe to be the most important of the principles of sanitation, viz. the keeping of organic refuse, whether solid or liquid, on the surface. The humus is the most perfect purifier and the best of filters, in virtue of its physical conditions and the life that is in it. We deliberately take our filth to the under side of the filter, and then complain because our surface wells are foul. The water companies are masters of the situation. Water is not paid for, as a rule, in proportion to the quantity used, because Parliament in its wisdom has decided that thriftiness in the use of water is wicked. The grossly overburdened ratepayer is now pricking up his ears to listen to the prattle about Welsh water schemes at the cost of 38,000,000l., and is congratulating himself that he is only a leaseholder, and that his bondage is terminable in seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years at most. Water carriage, in which the carrier is some sixty times more heavy and twenty times more bulky than the thing to be carried, is economically ridiculous (except in places where Nature has provided enormous quantities of water), and involves everyplace where it is tried in ruinous debt. Let us take an illustration.
A suburban district having 27,000 persons on 7,000 acres of land, or a population of less than four to the acre, mainly engaged in market gardening, has in the last ten years borrowed 106,442l. for sewerage works. The only visible result to the inhabitants is that even country roads, with houses at ¼-mile or ½-mile intervals, have been dotted with foul-smelling manholes.
In 1894-5 the sum of 18,534l. 14s. 1d. was raised from rates, and of this there was spent 6,518l. 13s. 10d. for interest and repayment of sewerage loans, and 2,542l. 3s. 11d. for current expenses in connection with sewage. If to this be added one-third of the establishment charges (say 700l.), we reach a total of 9,860l., or more than half the sum received from rates.
The provision and maintenance of all the patent domestic gimcracks which water carriage involves, together with the necessarily increased bills for water paid by the householder, would probably double that sum, and we shall not be far wrong in saying that these 27,000 persons are spending 20,000l. a year for the purpose of throwing their capital into the Thames.
This doubling of rates has most seriously crippled the chief industry of the district, and the market gardeners feel severely the heavy extra charges which they are called upon to pay. These gentlemen, by putting much of the offal of great towns to its proper use, and converting it into food and wages for the poor, are doing a great work, but they are in a fair way of being ruined by the silly recklessness of our local governors.
On December 8, 1895, a writer in The Times pointed out that in 1895, as compared with 1890, 633,000 acres of land were either out of cultivation or had been converted into 'permanent pasture,' a term which implies a minimum cultivation. Of these lands there were in Essex over 31,000 acres, in Kent nearly 30,000, in Surrey 15,000, in Sussex 29,000, in Berks 20,000, in Bucks 11,500, Herts 7,600, Middlesex 5,500.
It is a noteworthy fact that in the eight counties nearest London, which provides for them an insatiable market, nearly 150,000 acres of land should have glided out of cultivation in the last five years. It is impossible not to believe that the local rates in places near London are the last straw upon the back of the agriculturist, who is ruinously taxed in order that his land may be starved. To show what suburban agriculturists have to bear in the way of local taxation I will quote from my little book, 'Essays on Rural Hygiene,'[4] a few figures showing what is paid by a gentleman who farms 200 acres of land, of which 15 are grass:
| £ | s. | d. | |
| Income Tax (at 6d.) | 47 | 4 | 9 |
| Land Tax | 24 | 16 | 8½ |
| Poor Rate | 123 | 0 | 5 |
| Burial Rate | 19 | 13 | 8 |
| District Rate | 83 | 1 | 11 |
| Tithe (considered low) | 15 | 11 | 4 |
| —————— | |||
| £313 | 8 | 9½ | |
The social problems of the present day are many and complicated, and all of us have heard of 'Distressed Agriculture,' 'Pauperism,' 'The Aged Poor,' and the 'Unemployed.'
The agriculturist, who is being burdensomely taxed in order that his land may be starved, now has part of his rates paid for him out of the Imperial Exchequer. No one who knows the straits he is in will grudge him this relief. But the paying of local charges out of Imperial taxes has the inevitable result of making our 'Local Boards' more and more extravagant, because they have the spending without the trouble of raising money.
The reform most needed in the interest of agriculturists and others is to put an effectual check upon the extravagance and ostentation of Local Boards and District Councils, and to see that they spend no more money in any one year than they can raise in their districts. These bodies are now obliged to submit their accounts to a proper audit and to publish them, and it is hoped that the ratepayer will subject them to close criticism.
The policy of allowing persons who are elected for three years to raise loans and plunge a district into debt for a period of thirty years without one iota of personal responsibility is obviously dangerous. To allow reckless borrowing for the construction of works which are a source of expense and waste, and never of profit, would be called madness in private life.
Doubtless a seat on a Council which borrows money in lots of 100,000l. at a time affords a delightful amusement to the idle man, the busybody, the faddist, the philanthropist with a mission for fumbling in other persons' pockets, and the prophet who is ever anxious to borrow in order to provide for the future of which he is ignorant. Your prophet is the most dangerous of these persons, and instances will occur to the minds of most of us of municipalities which have been half ruined by over-sanguine persons endowed with speculative minds and persuasive tongues. The risk run by these persons is so small, be it remembered, that if an aggrieved ratepayer makes them defendants in an action, they enjoy the unique privilege of paying part of their costs and damages out of the successful plaintiff's pockets.
Most of the local borrowing in this country has been for works of sewerage, and although such works are financially ruinous, we are told that we get a dividend of 'Health.' This, however, is not true, and nobody could expect health to emerge from a system of which putrefaction and overcrowding are the chief characteristics.
The application of organic matter to well-tilled soil leads to positive gain and definite increase. The soil is the only permanent source of wealth in this world. And we are all of us absolutely dependent upon it for existence and happiness. The soil, if properly tilled, provides health as well as wealth, and be it remembered that in proportion to its productiveness so is the need of labour; and further, be it remembered that long after the eye is too dim and the hand too slow to keep time with steam machinery, the physical powers are amply sufficient for the cultivation of the land.
Many of our pressing social problems are inextricably linked with our duty to the soil, and any country in which the fertility of the soil does not increase cannot be rightly regarded as really in the van of civilisation and scientific progress. We are probably the wealthiest country on the globe, because for some time past we have been the hub of the entire financial world. Our success in one direction is no excuse for neglecting the more certain sources of wealth, and it is to be hoped that it will soon be regarded as evidence of neglect of our moral obligations to allow the land to drift out of cultivation.
CHAPTER VI
THE SOIL IN ITS RELATION TO DISEASE AND SANITATION[5]
In dealing with the relation of the earth to disease it behoves us to move with caution, and we shall do well at the outset to admit that there is very little knowledge of the subject which can be regarded as certain. We are in the land of conjectures, surmises, and plausible hypotheses, which perhaps are leading on to certain knowledge, but it will be necessary to check the dicta of the laboratories by experience gained outside of them. Such has always been the admirable custom in this country, where the labours of the pure scientist have been checked by that truly excellent staff of workers, the medical inspectors of the Local Government Board, to whom the world at large is more deeply indebted that perhaps it is aware. Before we blame the earth for causing us harm we must be sure that the facts, or alleged facts, of the bacteriologist are supported by the experience of the practical epidemiologist. Science unchecked by practice will certainly lead us astray in the future, as it has done in the past, and just as a 'lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies,' so a new scientific fact imperfectly understood has potentialities for evil which are unbounded.
If we set aside for the present the question of malaria, which is undoubtedly primarily connected with certain soils, we have very little evidence that any other disease of practical importance is primarily connected with the soil. There appear to be two microbes which are present with tolerable constancy in the upper layers of the soil, and which, when applied to a raw surface or injected hypodermically, may cause tetanus and malignant œdema; but as yet we are without any evidence that either of these diseases can be caused by drinking water which has percolated through the soil, or can rise as a miasm from the soil. They concern the surgeon mainly, and from the point of view of epidemiology are unimportant.
Phthisis, or rather death from phthisis, which is not quite the same thing, is said to be more prevalent on damp soils than on dry ones, and it has further been said that the death-rate from this disease has been reduced in certain towns by sewerage. This statement is not universally accepted, and even if it be true it does not necessarily inculpate the soil because damp soils are cold, and patients with phthisis or any chronic lung trouble are very intolerant of cold and damp. It is very generally recognised that phthisis is prevalent in proportion to overcrowding, and that it is conveyed by tuberculous milk or meat seems to be certain as the result of recent experimental work. Any charge against the soil itself is as yet not proven.
Diphtheria has been said to be prevalent on certain soils, but this assertion is now discredited, and we recognise that the great cause of its spread is overcrowding. Its habitat, if it has any, outside the animal body is not yet known.
Anthrax, which is due to a spore-bearing organism, can certainly be conveyed to animals browsing on grass soiled by the dung or blood of infected animals. The bacilli seem to die in the carcase of a dead animal within three days after death; and as, for spore formation, the free access of air and a temperature of 70° F. are necessary, it is not likely that this goes on in the earth. Pasteur's assertion that anthrax spores may be brought to the surface by earthworms is discredited by Koch and others. Man, I believe, has never been infected with anthrax except by direct inoculation or, as in the wool-sorter, by inhaling spores from infected wool or hides. Clearly, animals should not be allowed to browse in an infected field, and such fields should, where possible, be ploughed up and converted from pasture into arable land. The danger of burying animals dead of anthrax is considered unworthy of credence by those eminent veterinary authorities, Professor Brown and Professor McFadyean, and the latter has shown that the process of putrefaction is fatal to the virulence of the tissues of the dead animal when these are inoculated into other animals or administered by the mouth.
Enteric fever and cholera bear a close resemblance to each other in their mode of spread, and they are both recognised in this country as mainly, if not entirely, water-borne diseases. Whether this be absolutely the case in the tropics I will not pause to discuss, because I am ignorant of the conditions of tropical life; but it is known that at present the water-borne theory, as against the air-borne theory, is receiving more and more support in India. That these diseases are produced in most cases by the direct infection of water by the excreta of infected patients is in Europe very generally acknowledged. The cholera epidemics of 1848, 1854, and 1866, and the more recent epidemic at Hamburg, strongly support the water-borne theory of cholera, and the enteric fever epidemics which afford similar evidence in this country have been so numerous that it is unnecessary to particularise. The spread of both these diseases seems to be favoured by conditions of filth and overcrowding, and the existence of a filthy and sodden condition of the soil has been often spoken of in connection with them. Nevertheless, there have been very few outbreaks of enteric fever in which the fact that cesspools, sewers, or underground middens have been in direct communication with the sources of water has not been detected. If, as seems highly probable, typhoid fever may be conveyed by sewer air, there is nothing improbable in the suggestion that it can be conveyed by the air of privies or middens in which fæces are allowed to putrefy. That typhoid fever poison can lurk in properly-tilled ground seems very unlikely, and I am not aware that such a thing has ever been suggested. Pettenkofer's statement, that epidemics of typhoid fever and cholera follow depressions of the ground water may be true for Munich, but it has not been materially supported in this country; and, in Budapest, Fodor has found that these diseases are more prevalent when the ground water is high. The variations of level in the ground water depend upon such a number of meteorological and other conditions, and give rise to so many and different effects, that even if Pettenkofer's statement be accepted it would not necessarily point to the earth as the natural habitat of the typhoid fever poison. Professor Lane Notter, in his summing up of this ground-water question, says[6]: 'It must, however, be borne in mind that it is not the ground itself which is the cause of the disease, but the impurities in the soil which the varying level of the ground water helps to set in action.' Now, no organic impurity can possibly reach the soil from the subsoil, which is purely inorganic. Any organic impurity which reaches the ground water must, therefore, come from above, and is due in the vast majority of cases to our mismanagement of organic refuse. Dr. Sims Woodhead[7] says that 'the deeper layers of the earth are frequently almost entirely free from micro-organisms, just as is the ground water.' Of course if the soil of a city be porous, and if there be a subterranean network of sewers interspersed with cesspools, this would (in the high probability that an average proportion of these contrivances leak) constitute a very great danger, but we must not blame the earth because we mismanage it. The earth, be it remembered, is our sole permanent source of wealth, and we must not needlessly quarrel with our bread-and-butter.
This world would not be habitable were it not for the humus with which its bare rocks are clothed. The humus is the living covering of the skeleton, and its formation has taken ages. The primitive bare rock which has been 'weathered' by the changing seasons gets clothed with a growth of lichen. This thin but rough covering entangles stray particles, and thus by its own decay affords a nidus for a stronger growth. This stronger growth, by chemical action and physical force, works further into the rock, on which the soaking rains and rending frosts have an increasing effect, and thus, partly by the disruption of the inorganic rock, and partly by the increase in ever-growing quantities of vegetable decay, the humus rises, as it were, 'on stepping-stones of its dead self' until it is able to afford footing and nourishment for the stately forest tree, and its fertility finally becomes sufficient to attract the attention of the husbandman. This humus, the loose, mainly organic covering of the rocks, is formed, as we have seen, by crumbling rocks from below and by the constant additions of dead organic matter which are deposited upon the surface. These additions of organic matter, be they in the form of dead animals, dead leaves, dung, or what not, become humified, and thus the stock of humus tends steadily to increase. The greater the stock of humus the greater the fertility, and the greater the fertility the greater will be the amount of dead organic matter to increase the stock of humus. The conversion of the dead organic matter into humus is a biological process, and is caused by the animals which live in the humus, and is perfected by the growth of fungi. On this account I ventured some years ago to speak of the humus as the 'Living Earth,' and I take it that no more important addition has ever been made to the stock of human knowledge than the recognition that the humus teems with life, and that its fertility and healthiness depend entirely upon biological processes. If the humus be sterilised, either by heat or antiseptics, it becomes absolutely barren. It was at one time supposed that the fertility of the soil depended mainly upon the process of nitrification, whereby nitrogenous organic matter is converted into soluble nitrates which are absorbed by the roots of plants, and there can be no doubt that these nitrifying organisms are most important. The causes of the fertility of the soil are probably far more complex than we suppose, and I think it may be said that we are as yet only upon the threshold of our knowledge with regard to them.
The phenomenon of 'symbiosis,' or the living together of chlorophyll-bearing plants with those which have no chlorophyll in so-called symbiotic community, where each partner works for its fellow's good as well as its own, is far more common than was supposed. Originally demonstrated in so-called lichens, which really consist of symbioses of fungi and algæ, it was next shown in the papilionaceous leguminosæ, whose nourishment appears to be largely dependent upon so-called bacterial nodules which grow upon their roots, and, according to my observations, more upon the superficial roots than those which run more deeply. In Oliver's edition of Kerner's 'Natural History of Plants'[8] will be found an account of symbioses between fungi and big flowering plants in which 'the division of labour consists in the fungus mycelium providing the green-leaved phanerogam with water and food-stuffs from the ground, whilst receiving in return from its partner such organic compounds as have been produced in the green leaves.' 'The union of two partners always takes place underground, the absorbent roots of the phanerogam being woven over by the filaments of a mycelium.... As the root grows onward the mycelium grows with it, accompanying it like a shadow.... The ultimate ramifications of roots of trees 100 years old and the suction roots of year-old seedlings are woven by the mycelial filaments in precisely the same manner.' It is stated that many plants only flourish in symbiotic community, and in this fact lies the explanation of the readiness of some plants to grow and flourish from cuttings put in sand, or from seedlings grown in nutritive solutions, while others, in the absence of the necessary fungi encircling their roots, cannot be made to strike root or flourish in this way. When it is stated that to the latter class belong oaks, beeches, firs, willows, poplars, rhododendrons, and heaths, the importance of symbiosis in this world will be readily understood. Now we know why it is that the gardener prizes leaf-mould in spite of its being comparatively poor in nitrogen as compared with guano. Leaf-mould is full of fungi, and in it the plant readily establishes its requisite symbiosis.
This great and astounding fact of symbiosis, of which we have only recently had cognisance, will serve to enforce the steadily growing opinion that the sphere of the chemist is in all living processes strictly limited. In estimating the value of artificial manures the chemist's dictum is of the greatest value, but his analysis when used to gauge the value of the living humus may be entirely misleading. The chemist has told us again and again that the quantity of nitrogen in humus and in earth-closet soil is, as compared with many artificial manures, comparatively small, and therefore the mistake has been made of regarding human fæces and the product of earth closets as of small manurial value. I believe that such a statement is most misleading, and on this point I claim to speak with no inconsiderable experience. For the past ten years I have cultivated a garden of about an acre and a quarter in extent in which the only manure used has been the excremental and other refuse of some twenty cottages with about 100 inhabitants. In August 1895 I invited a party of the British Medical Association to view that garden, and I think that none of my guests on that occasion will refuse to admit that the garden was as full of crops of one kind and another as a garden could well be. Dr. Voelcker, the chemist of the Royal Agricultural Society, whom I had the honour of numbering among my guests on that occasion, told me that he had never seen a piece of ground more fully stocked, and he very kindly went carefully round the garden with me to see if his experienced eye could detect any sign of sickness in the soil. I have never detected any such signs, and neither could he. The garden affords no evidence of being overdone with manure, and my belief is that it would take a great deal more. This ten years' experience has convinced me that human fæces constitute a manure of the greatest value, all analyses to the contrary notwithstanding. The probable explanation lies in the fact that the microbes extruded with the fæces are of great value in developing the fertility of the humus.
Many recent experiences in sanitation and in medicine force upon us the conclusion that the value of chemical analysis in biological questions is not final. Water which has been found to contain the bacillus of typhoid fever has passed the tests of the chemist, and there can be little doubt that in the past many samples of wholesome water have been condemned for containing the products, in the form of nitrates, of oxidised organic matter. Again, the action of toxins and antitoxins is quite beyond the reach of the chemist, and the marvellous results which have been obtained by administering thyroid extract teach us that in dietetics there is something which the chemist cannot gauge. Raw thyroid and cooked thyroid would give the same results on analysis, but how different is the physiological result! How different is the action of the carefully dried stomach of the calf in the form of rennet or pepsin as compared with a dish of tripe! These facts must force upon us the speculation that the same thing may produce very different effects according to the temperature to which it may have been artificially raised by drying under a vacuum or by cooking, and must drive us to the conclusion that although it may be advisable under certain circumstances to boil our milk or our water, it is possible that the act of cooking may change, we know not to what degree, the physiological action of the milk or water which has been thus treated. My experience tells me that the chemists are wrong when they say that human excreta are of small manurial value. Their analyses are doubtless right, but their conclusions are erroneous and very dangerously misleading. In this statement I should be supported by the whole of the 'Far Eastern' nations.
The ultimate manurial value of urine is doubtless very great, although when pure or nearly pure it is very deadly to herbage. The only satisfactory way of using urine as a manure is to imitate the farmer, by mixing it with an absorbent material, such as straw, sawdust, peat, earth, paper, cotton waste, wool waste, &c., placing it upon the surface of the ground and digging or ploughing it in.
The best evidence that the humus is alive is the fact that it breathes. The fungi which are destitute of chlorophyll absorb oxygen and give off carbonic acid, in this respect resembling animals and differing from the chlorophyll-bearing plants. The most easily obtained evidence of this is the fact that decaying refuse generates heat, a fact which is easily ascertained by using a thermometer. Thus I have at present in the garden of my cottage in the Thames Valley a heap of privet leaves intermixed with a quantity of fine twigs which give it great porosity and serve to admit a large quantity of air. On the morning of October 21 the temperature of the air was 39° F., and the temperature of the heap of leaves was 57° (18° more than the air). On October 22 there was a heavy cold rain with a cold easterly wind. On the morning of October 23 the temperature of the air was 40° and the temperature of the heap of leaves was 56°. On the night of October 23-24 there was (for the time of year) a very severe frost. My heap of leaves on the morning of the 24th was solidified on the surface by the frost, but the temperature of the interior was 53° while that of the air was 30° (an increase of 23° over the air). This heap, it should be stated, is only a small heap, and would all go into a big wheelbarrow. On the morning of October 24, after taking the temperature of this heap, I turned it over with a fork, putting the frozen top in the centre and altering the position of the constituents of the heap. A quarter of an hour later the temperature of the heap was found to be 32°, and at seven in the evening it was still at freezing-point, or only just above it. The night of October 24-25 was again very frosty, as many as 12° of frost having been registered at a house close by. At eight in the morning of the 25th, however, my heap of leaves showed a temperature of 40°, having risen 8° during this very cold night, and being 20° above the minimum cold recorded in the night. At 7 P.M. on the 25th the temperature of the heap was 42°, and the next morning, after a third very cold and frosty night, it had risen to 45°. The rise of temperature here was clearly due to the respiration of living things, and could not have been in any degree caused by absorption of sun heat. (Since the above was written autumn has come upon us, and the fallen leaves have been collected into a big heap. On November 15 the temperature of this heap was found to be 62° F., and a week later (November 22) had risen to 104° F.!) The fact that the humification of organic matter generates heat is a fact which is of enormous practical value to the gardener and farmer. The market gardens round London, which produce astounding crops and assimilate an enormous quantity of dung, are in a sense extended and mild hotbeds. One hopes that those who are advocating the burning of organic refuse will pause to think, however necessary such a process may be under certain circumstances, how great is the dispersion of energy which such a process involves and how much heat is lost which might otherwise be used for the stimulation of germination and growth in seeds and plants. One hopes also that those who would condemn as foul the humus which contains a large amount of carbonic acid will remember that this gas may only be an evidence of perfectly healthy and vigorous action. The important fact that the tillers of the soil are the most long-lived of all the laboring classes is one which must never be lost sight of.
That the humus breathes and generates an enormous quantity of carbonic acid precisely as an animal does is a fact which the agriculturist must ever bear in mind. Many of the operations of the farm have for their object the loosening of the soil and the admission of air to enable the respiratory processes to go on. Every farmer will tell you that the earlier he can get upon the ground to hoe his turnips the better will be the crop (other things being equal), and every farmer knows the advantage of thorough tillage. If the respiration of the humus is an important fact, it becomes very important indeed not to drown it. It stands drowning no better than a man does, but, like a man, it requires a requisite amount, but not too much, to drink. There can be no doubt that the failure, which is almost general, of so-called sewage farming arises through the drowning of the humus; and it must be borne in mind that sewage water consists to a very considerable extent of water which has been boiled, or is hard, deep well water, and has not the valuable quality of rain-water of containing some 2·5 volumes per cent. of atmospheric air dissolved in it. There can be little doubt that the great trouble to the sewage farmer is the excess of water which drowns the humus. When three or four ounces of excrement are mixed with 1,200 times their weight of water they run small chance of humification, and one must fear that the difficulties of the sewage farmer (financial or agricultural, or both) must increase with the magnificence and extravagance of the water-supply of the town the sanitary interests of which the sewage farm is intended to subserve. The evil effects of too much water have come before me lately in two very striking examples. While going over the experimental farm belonging to Mr. H. C. Stephens, M.P., at Cholderton, on Salisbury Plain, this autumn (which I did in company with a large number of practical agriculturists), there were here and there noticeable in the middle of fields having a uniform quality of soil, and which had been treated in identical fashions, certain large patches over which the growth of turnips, as compared with the rest of the fields was very defective. The explanation offered was that on these patches the animals had been folded in wet weather, that the dung had been trodden into the ground, and the soil had been hardened and consolidated by the trampling of the beasts. Under such conditions (air not being adequately admitted to the pores of the soil) the humification of the dung had been hindered and the crops stunted in consequence. This was a fact new to me, who am only an amateur agriculturist; but I may state that it was unanimously and unreservedly accepted as an adequate explanation by all the farmers present, who seemed to be perfectly familiar with the consequences of folding cattle in the wet. On the other hand, the most fertile patch of the whole farm was where the cattle had been folded for a fortnight continuously on the same spot during the severe frost of last winter, and had been fed upon food which was necessarily brought to them on that spot. The ground being as hard as iron could not be more consolidated by trampling, and with the advent of the thaw there was a general disruption of soil and dung, and humification went on rapidly in earth of which the pores had been opened by the beneficent effects of a deep frost, and which had received an amount of dung which was exceptionally great.
Another experience was a visit to a sewage farm belonging to a town in which brewing is the staple industry. This farm was large (nearly twice as big as at one time was considered necessary) and was composed of a very porous, gravelly soil in a high situation. The manager was an able man, and one felt that if success was to be obtained it was here. But the amount of water pumped on to this ground was exceptionally great, amounting at times to as much as 150 gallons per head of population per diem. The result can be imagined. The humus was drowned, and large tracts of the farm were as wet as a marsh, bore no crops, and never could be made to bear any under such conditions. As soon as it had been saturated it was ploughed up and saturated again, there being no time (let alone other considerations) to grow crops in face of the huge volumes of water which had to be dealt with. Those parts of the farm which were under cultivation grew enormous quantities of water-grass, a noxious weed, and altogether the agricultural aspects of this estate were as gloomy as could well be. As for the effluent, it was thick and turbid, and stunk like a dirty brewery. It was impossible to believe that the effluent had been rendered safe for discharge into a river, and its cost must have approached that of the beer which was sold in the adjoining town. The amount of water seemed to be the trouble here, and clearly the first duty of the municipality would be to divert directly into the river all the storm water and all the water which was used in enormous quantities for refrigerating purposes, and which, being perfectly wholesome, might go into the stream direct. A visit to the pumping-station of this municipality was most unpleasant for the nostrils, and left upon me the impression that the Local Government Board would do well to insist that all sewage committees should have a board-room at the pumping-station and another at the farm, and should be allowed to deliberate in no other place. The humification of excrement in the presence of such an overpowering amount of water is impossible, and I believe that municipalities which are now busy diverting storm water will have to go further and deal with excreta, domestic slop-water, and manufacturers' effluents on different and separate systems. I confess I should like to see water-closets dealt with on an independent system by a vacuum principle such as is advocated by Shone and Liernur. Manufacturers' refuse, which is liable to contain chemicals and antiseptics, is so likely to kill the humus by poison as well as by drowning that it seems impossible to deal with it on any one system, and it is to be hoped that with the advance of chemistry it may be increasingly possible to turn manufacturing effluents to profitable account.
It is now more than ten years ago since I first deliberately drew attention to the shortcomings of modern sanitary methods, and pointed out that the safe disposal of organic refuse was a question of which the biologist, rather than the engineer or chemist, would give us the solution. It is a hopeful sign of the times that engineers are now recognising this fact, thanks mainly to the teaching of the Board of Health in Massachusetts. The purification of sewage is wrought by the presence of living organisms on the filters; and for the due filtration of drinking-water it is now admitted that the filtering material must have a coating of living slime. These are facts which are now all but universally admitted.
Our go-ahead municipalities, formed on democratic lines, are more ostentatious than the worst of Roman emperors. The London County Council wished at one time to give 750,000l. for a site for its house! The central ideas of modern municipalism are the raising of loans and the sweating of the ratepayer. It must be remembered that there is no relation between magnificence and real efficiency. For example, in a town which I sometimes visit I am always interested by a stately pageant consisting of a huge conveyance weighing at least half a ton and looking like a cross between a railway truck and a hearse. This is drawn by a horse weighing 15 or 16 cwt., and this horse is guarded by two men weighing, perhaps, 12 st. apiece. Inside the hearse are eighteen huge pails weighing 40 lb. each, and inside the pails are the weekly excreta of ninety people, which should, if properly managed, certainly not weigh more than 200 lb. or 300 lb. In short, there are about 30 cwt. of gear for the removal of at most 3 cwt. of material. This cumbrous array works, it need hardly be said, at a funereal pace, and there can be no doubt that a lad with a hand-truck coming every day would do the work far more rapidly, efficiently, and cheaply.
It must be borne in mind that the fertility of the soil should bear a certain proportion to the density of population, and that the ability of land to support its population ought steadily to increase, especially if the population enjoys the blessings of free trade. I may perhaps best illustrate my meaning by referring again to the visit which I paid to the farm of Mr. H. C. Stephens, M.P. The down lands which comprise this district consist of a very few inches of humus overlying chalk, the herbage is scanty, and the population of animals (in relation to acreage) necessarily very small. One of the difficulties which the farmer has had to encounter in this district is the obtaining of sufficient water for his stock, and perhaps the most important work which Mr. Stephens has done is to sink a deep well in the chalk. This well, worked by a wind engine and provided with storage reservoirs, gives a supply of water which may be regarded as unlimited. With good water-supply, ample area, and the possibility of importing food which the neighbouring railway affords, it became possible to maintain a very large number of sheep, oxen, and horses for farm and breeding purposes. The animals are all folded, and the whole of their dung is returned to the soil, and the effect produced by this large addition of organic matter cannot fail to strike the visitor, who finds in spots where the herbage was previously so thin as to approach barrenness that he now has to wade knee-deep through a thick felt of grass. All over the farm the effect of adding this organic matter to the soil is everywhere apparent, and it is certain that the need of imported food-stuffs for the animals must diminish in proportion to the increase of fertility of the farm. This estate on Salisbury Plain realises, in fact, the utopia of which I have spoken in 'Rural Hygiene'[9]—i.e., a place where there are water-pipes but no sewer pipes. The indispensable water has by skilful but comparatively simple engineering been brought within easy reach of the human and animal population, but the organic excrements and other refuse, instead of being washed away into a neighbouring valley to poison the inhabitants there, are retained upon the soil to provide extra herbage, extra meat, extra work, and extra wages, with increased contentment and no loss of health. The increased fertility of the soil must have the effect of counteracting poverty and diminishing that charge upon the land known as the Poor-rate, and as for sanitary rates, the very essence of the progress I have been describing consists in the fact that there are none to pay. When the members of the local council in this utopia have mended the roads and paid for the school they may return with a clear conscience to their own business, instead of meddling with that of other people.
The fact that the potential increase of the fertility of the soil is to a certain extent proportioned to the increase of population is a political and economical fact of fundamental importance. The fertility of the soil of a country which imports millions of tons of food ought steadily to increase, and I believe that but for counteracting circumstances free trade ought to have benefited the farmer equally with all other classes of the community. If the enormous quantity of excremental and refuse matters due to free trade had been placed upon the land to increase the national stock of humus the fertility of the soil must have increased proportionately, and the fall in prices due to the competition of imported food would have been proportionately counteracted. If on the farm at Cholderton which I have been describing the well water had been used for washing all the excrement of the animals into the nearest river there could have been no increase of fertility of the soil, and the animals must have been dependent upon imported cake and other food-stuffs to a degree which would never vary, instead of, as at present, tending steadily to get less. Among the nostrums which have been suggested for the relief of agricultural distress are 'light railways,' but as imports and exports are apt to balance themselves, one would fear that the light railway, for every truss of hay or sack of corn which it conveys to the nearest junction, will bring back a frozen carcase of meat or its equivalent. If, however, these light railways (and the existing railways) can bring the refuse of the towns on to the land to increase the agricultural capital in the form of humus, the farmers will certainly have more to sell and our need of imported food (per head of population) will tend steadily to get less. Until—if I may use the expression—we make some serious effort to leave our imported 'cake' upon the land in a form in which it can be advantageously utilised, our needs for importation will never get less, and our state of scare as to the sufficiency of our Navy will get steadily worse as the population increases. It is very bad policy for railways to charge exorbitant rates for the conveyance of dung, because the less dung they import the less will be the export of produce on the return journey. It is impossible to doubt that the man who increases the fertility of the soil of a country deserves well of that country and should be encouraged by the State and his fellow-countrymen. Professor Otis Mason of Washington has gone so far as to say: 'The form of law which does not decrease the amount of taxation proportionally to the yield per acre is not in the line of progress.' And again: 'Any law which punishes a man with taxation for preventing waste, recuperating worn acres, or developing the latent resources of nature, is wicked.' There can be no doubt that taxation presses very hardly upon agriculturists, especially those whose land happens to be within the boundary of a 'progressive' corporation. I have mentioned (p. [149]) a friend who farms 200 acres of land (of which fifteen are grass) in the Thames Valley who pays more than 300l. a year in imperial and local taxes. This is due to the fact that he is under the heel of a 'progressive' board, which, finding it can borrow money at 3 per cent., is making full use of its powers and is fast converting a pretty village into something scarcely distinguishable from Houndsditch.
We may now profitably turn to the consideration of Malaria, a disease which is undoubtedly connected with the soil and which has its habitat in the soil of certain places. Malaria requires for its development decaying organic matter, a high or moderately high temperature, and usually an excess of moisture. Tropical marshes are the elected seats of malaria, but not the exclusive seats, for it is known that certain rocks and arid plains, as well as the sandy estuaries of rivers, are liable to be malarious. The one thing which all, or almost all, malarious districts have in common is the fact that they are barren, or nearly so, uncultivated, and in many cases uncultivable. Malaria is rare in England, but once it was common, and we must not forget that James I. and Cromwell are both of them said to have been victims of this disease, which was rife in London in their time, especially in the Essex marshes and on the south side of the Thames, in Lambeth Marsh and the adjoining districts. An undrained country is uncultivable, and it has been found that drainage followed by cultivation has in this country enormously lessened the amount of malarious disease. Cultivation of land finishes the work begun by artificial drainage. The soil is dried and aërated by tillage, and the organic matter, when the humus is no longer drowned, is oxidised, and goes to nourish plants and trees, which effect an upward drainage no less important than the downward drainage, while the oxygen exhaled by the green leaves cannot but benefit the air of the locality. If we wish to keep clear of malaria in this country we must till the soil and so nourish the humus that its produce may be sufficiently valuable to bear the expense of any artificial drainage which it may be necessary to maintain. If the land of this country goes out of cultivation, as in places it seems to be doing, I see no reason why we or our successors should not witness a recrudescence of malarious disease in localities which are prone to develop it.
It will not be unprofitable in this connection to consider the history of the Roman Campagna. It is generally admitted that the Roman Campagna was not always the desolate waste which it ultimately became. It was prone to malaria, doubtless, but this was kept in check by the large farming population. It is not conceivable that in days when locomotion was slow a city could have attained the proportions and importance of Rome if it had been situated in the middle of a sterile and malarious plain. The neglect of agriculture began in the Augustan age, when Rome was at the zenith of her power, and it is worthy of note that Mæcenas is credited with having incited Virgil to write the 'Georgics' in order to direct, by this fascinating method, the attention of the Roman people to the neglected joys of agriculture. With the acquisition of fertile districts in Africa and elsewhere, not only did the need for home-grown commodities decrease, but it is probable that the profits of home farming decreased also. Corn was imported in enormous quantities, while the expenses connected with the defence of the Empire led to such a merciless taxation of the landholder that in self-defence he was obliged to allow his land to go out of cultivation, and thus escape from the brutal exactions of the tax-gatherer. According to Gibbon, within sixty years of the death of Constantine 320,000 acres of the district of Campania had become barren. Further, there can be no doubt that the Cloaca Maxima and other cloacæ sent to the Tiber much, if not all, of the organic refuse which should have been returned to the land. Finally, there can be little doubt that the extravagant water supply of ancient Rome must have had the effect of causing neglect of local wells, and as the water of the aqueducts was supplied to places in the Campagna as well as to Rome itself, the discontinuance of pumping must have helped to leave moisture in the soil at the same time that an extra supply from a distance was giving an additional quantity to it. As these great works of engineering did away with the necessity of manual labour, and as the barren land stood in no need of husbandmen, it is not to be wondered at that the problem of the unemployed grew urgent in Rome. We hear that in the later days of the Empire the masses congregated at the baths or waited whole days at the doors of the amphitheatre while they were fed with doles of bread or corn supplied from the public granaries. With a dense idle population and with barren and unwholesome surroundings the amenities of Rome as an imperial residence declined, and on this account it was probably that Diocletian seldom visited it; and one cannot but think that the social and sanitary conditions of the capital were among the causes which led Constantine to abandon it in favour of his new city on the Bosphorus. Finally, one is not surprised to hear that when Alaric took the city in the beginning of the fifth century he did so, not by direct assault, but by seizing the huge granaries and magazines at the Port of Ostia, and then offering to the unhappy Romans the choice of surrender or starvation. We are often asked to admire the Roman aqueducts, and Rome is not infrequently held up to us as a model to be copied. I fear we are copying her only too exactly, and I fear that equally with Rome we shall find out the futility of a brutal and reckless expenditure mainly directed towards the starvation of the soil and a senseless struggle with conditions imposed on us by Nature. I have heard it suggested that the cultivation of the soil of England is of no importance, that our islands are destined for residential and manufacturing purposes only, and that our sustenance is to depend entirely upon 'big-bellied argosies' bearing all the treasures of more fertile climes. But the cultivation of the soil and the nurturing of the humus have important bearings upon questions other than food supply, and if we continue to starve the humus and to convey our filth beneath it instead of upon it, I fear that the cost of living in this country is likely to increase, while the pleasures of existence will diminish.
The moral of all that I have been saying is to the effect that to nourish the humus and to till it are the inexorable duty of the sanitarian. This simple duty is the key to plentiful food and a good supply of wholesome water. Nature is relentless, and will sooner or later destroy those who neglect to follow her inexorable laws. We used to say that 'the weakest' (morally, physically, and mentally) 'must go to the wall.' Now we use the expression 'survival of the fittest' to express the same idea. Nature does not relent, but man, in his commendable efforts towards philanthropy, endeavours to relent, and hence the principle underlying much modern sanitary work is the attempt to bring about the survival of the unfittest. If I may judge from the criticisms to which at one time and another the ideas which I have put forward have been subjected, I may conclude that the principles advocated are considered right, but that the lowest classes of our population are not to be trusted to safeguard to any extent the wholesomeness of their homes. Therefore we are all asked to come down to the level of the dirtiest and most careless, and our sanitary methods (in which there is too much of Hercules and too little of Minerva) do not admit of any encouragement being given to those living within a municipal boundary who may be so circumstanced that they can adopt the principles I have advocated. No! we must all be tarred with the same brush, and no quarter is given to those who refuse to allow the municipality to be put to the trouble and expense of robbing them of stuff which they find invaluable on their own land. In Hampshire I have spent a considerable sum of money in freeing the river from some pollution and saving trouble to the town. Incidentally, I have improved the value of a house, and, of course, the rates of that house have been raised. Such a fact is a most effectual check upon the vast majority of those who might wish to imitate what they may approve of in principle, and I feel assured that no real advance in sanitation will be made until there is an equitable adjustment of sanitary rates and we have the right, if we desire it, to pay for water by meter. That water should be paid for according to rateable value, and that the rating authority and the water authority should be identical, seems to me to be an arrangement which the ratepayer will possibly find irksome. The greatest of sanitary troubles in the present day is overcrowding, and this trouble is greatly fostered by our methods of sanitation. And yet we find responsible persons suggesting that open spaces should be taxed at 'site value,' while at the same time they are willing to spend any amount of millions in bringing water from Wales because they think that eventually their dangerously dense population will have a density twice as great. We shall some day recognise the futility of fighting against Nature. It is the engineer's business to overcome natural obstacles, and we of the medical profession cannot but have the greatest admiration for the many distinguished members of that sister profession which, by its skill and daring, has in countless ways assisted the development of our commerce and manufactures. They have, indeed, 'expelled Nature with a pitchfork,' but it behoves us to remember the rest of the quotation. We must distinguish also between brilliancy of achievement and the end attained. We all of us admire the brilliant men who made the Thames Tunnel, built the 'Great Eastern' steamship, and gave us the luxury of the broad-gauge railway; but it is doubtful if the original shareholders in those enterprises would participate in our enthusiasm. Money will accomplish nearly anything in the engineering way, and it is not the engineer's business to consider the financial side of the question. I have always had a shrewd suspicion that Archimedes was possibly less admired by the Syracusan ratepayer than by the rest of the world, and I have often pondered whether, had he lived in these days, and had made his famous request of δὸς ποῦ στῶ, the Local Government Board would have sanctioned the issuing of a Syracusan 3 per cent. stock to provide the fulcrum for which he asked.
I frequently meet friends who say, 'I've been reading that article of yours about the earth,' and so forth, and then, after patting one on the back and being charmingly complimentary, they generally end by asserting that, after all, the convenience of the water-closet more than counteracts its disadvantages. The fascinations of this winsome apparatus seem unconquerable, and one is bound to confess that—provided the machine be of a good pattern and well made; provided the plumber who sets it has knowledge and a conscience; provided those who use it do not try its constitution with brickbats and old boots; provided there is not a frost; and provided there is not a drought—it does sweep out of the Cockney's house material of the use of which he is ignorant, and for which he has no market. All the difficulties and dangers of the water-closet are on the far side of the trap, and do not trouble the householder. I feel inclined to paraphrase the words which King Lear used to something equally fascinating and, as he found, equally treacherous:—
'But to the syphon do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends'....
Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,
To sweeten my imagination.'
As a champion of individual liberty, I would say that those who in country places wish for water-closets should pay for them, and those who, for conscience' sake, do not pollute the rivers or starve the soil should not be taxed to pay for the misdeeds of those who do.