Following the historic investigations of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, numerous engineers and investigators commenced applying to practice the principles there laid down, and with such good results that there are upwards of 200 purification plants in the United States to-day, and in Pennsylvania alone plans are under way at the present time for over one hundred sewage disposal works. Such a showing is encouraging, and leads to the hope that within a decade no city of any importance within the States will be pouring impurified sewage into public streams or lakes.
Up to within the last quarter century no thought was given in the United States to the disposal or destruction of the grosser particles which make up the waste of a large city, nor was provision made at sanatoria, hospitals and like institutions for the destruction of materials which might prove infectious; yet, no less important than the removal of sewage by water carriage is the systematic collection and subsequent destruction of all matter of no value which might prove a vehicle of disease, if a clean, sanitary environment is to be maintained. The necessity for such removal and destruction was first felt in hospitals, sanatoria, barracks and camps, where many people are brought together under unusual circumstances, and infective matter is liable to accumulate, thereby proving a menace to the community. It is not surprising, therefore, that the desirability of destroying such accumulated wastes was first brought home to the medical staff connected with military service, and that the medical authorities should be connected with the British army.
The first garbage destructor, or garbage furnace, of which there is any record, was constructed about 1860, at Gibraltar, for the exclusive destruction by fire of all waste matter from the British garrison. In the United States, likewise, it was at the army posts where the need for waste destructors was first felt, and in 1885 Lieutenant H. I. Reilly, U. S. A., built the first American garbage furnace at Governor's Island, New York Harbor. From that time on, the value of garbage destructors became more widely known, and within recent years the need for a sanitary and convenient method for disposing of waste matters has been occupying the attention of those in charge of institutions devoted to the care of the sick, infirm, feeble, and to the control of the criminal. In addition to the superintendents of hospitals, prisons, sanatoria and asylums, those in charge of medical schools and laboratories, hotels, business houses and municipalities have given the matter much consideration, and at the present time most of the large cities of the United States have constructed garbage destructors, or are seriously considering the step, while the principal hospitals, hotels, department stores, medical colleges and public institutions throughout the country have already installed destructors. Likewise, garbage destructors have been constructed at all of the United States Government army posts.
·NEW·YORK·PVBLIC·BATHS·
·23d·STREET·
The Twenty-third Street Public Bath is considered one of the finest and most modern in New York City