They also say, That in one-half of London people drink Thames water; and in the other half, get water from the Chadwell spring and River Lea. That the River Lea, for twenty miles, flows through a densely-peopled district. and is, in its passage, drenched with refuse matter from the population on its banks. That there is added to Thames water the waste of two hundred and twenty cities, towns, and villages; and that between Richmond and Waterloo-bridge more than two hundred sewers discharge into it their fetid matter. That the washing to and fro of tide secures the arrival of a large portion of filth from below Westminster, at Hammersmith; effects a perfect mixture, which is still farther facilitated by the splashing of the steamboats. Mr. Hassal has published engravings of the microscopic aspect of water taken from companies which suck the river up at widely-separated stages of its course through town—so tested, one drop differs little from another in the degree of its impurity. They tell us that two companies—the Lambeth and West Middlesex—supply Thames Mixture to subscribers as it comes to them; but that others filter more or less. They say that filtering can expurge nothing but mechanical impurities, while the dissolved pollution which no filter can extract is that part which communicates disease. We know this; well, and what then? There are absurdities so lifted above ridicule, that Momus himself would spoil part of the fun if he attempted to trangress beyond a naked statement of them. What do the members of [pg 611] this Water Party want? I'll tell you what I verily believe they are insane enough to look for.
They would, if possible, forsake Thames water, calling it dirty, saying it is hard. So hard they say it is, that it requires three spoonfuls of tea instead of two in every man's pot, two pounds of soap for one in every man's kitchen. So they would fetch soft water from a Gathering Ground in Surrey, adopting an example set in Lancashire; from rain-fall on the heaths between Bagshot and Farnham, and from tributaries of the River Wey, they would collect water in covered reservoirs, and bring it by A covered Aqueduct to London. In London, they would totally abolish cisterns, and all intermittence of supply. Water in London they would have to be, as at Nottingham, accessible in all rooms at all times. They would have water, at high pressure, climbing about every house in every court and alley. They would place water, so to speak, at the finger's end, limiting no household as to quantity. They would enable every man to bathe. They would revolutionize the sewer-system, and have the town washed daily, like a good Mahometan, clean to the finger-nails. They hint that all this might not even be expensive; that the cost of disease and degradation is so much greater than the cost of health and self-respect, as to pay back, possibly, our outlay, and then yield a profit to the nation. They say that, even if it were a money loss, it would be moral gain; and they ask whether we have not spent millions, ere now, upon less harmless commodities than water?
An ingenious fellow had a fiddle—all, he said, made out of his own head; and wood enough was left to make another. He must have been a sanitary man; his fiddle was a crotchet. Still farther to illustrate their own capacity of fiddle-making, these good but misguided people have been rooting up some horrible statistics of the filth and wretchedness which our back-windows overlook, with strange facts anent fever, pestilence, and the communication of disease. All this I purposely suppress; it is peculiarly disagreeable. Delicate health we like, and will learn gladly how to obtain it; but results we are content with, and can spare the details, when those details bring us into contact, even upon paper, with the squalid classes.
If these outcries of the Water Party move the public to a thirst for change, it would be prudent for us ægritudinary men not rashly to swim against the current. Let us adopt a middle course, a patronizing tone. It is in our favor that a large number of the facts which these our foes have to produce, are, by a great deal too startling to get easy credit. A single Pooh! has in it more semblance of reason than a page of facts, when revelations of neglected hygiene are on the carpet. If the case of the Sanitary Reformers had been only half as well made out, it would be twice as well supported.
VIII. Filling The Grave.
M. Boutigny has published an account of some experiments which go to prove that we may dip our fingers into liquid metal with impunity. Professor Plücker, of Bonn, has amply confirmed Boutigny's results, and in his report hints a conclusion that henceforth “certain minor operations in surgery may be performed with least pain by placing the foot in a bath of red-hot iron.” Would you not like to see Professor Plücker, with his trowsers duly tucked up, washing his feet in a pailful of this very soothing fluid? And would it not be a fit martyrdom for sanitary doctors, if we could compel them also to sacrifice their legs in a cause, kin to their own, of theory and innovation? As Alderman Lawrence shrewdly remarked the other day, from his place in the Guildhall, the sanitary reform cry is “got up.” That is the reason why, in his case, it does not go down. He, for his own part, did not disapprove the flavor of a church-yard, and appeared to see no reason why it should be cheated of its due. The sanitary partisans, he said, were paid for making certain statements. It would be well if we could cut off their supply of halfpence, and so silence them. Liwang, an ancient Emperor of China, fearing insurrection, forbade all conversation, even whispering, in his dominions. It would be well for us if Liwang lived now as our Secretary for the Home Department. There is too much talking—is there not, Mr. Carlyle? We want Liwang among us. However, as matters stand, it is bad enough for the sanitary reformers. “They drop their arms and tremble when they hear,” they are despised by Alderman Lawrence.[3]
Let us uphold our city grave-yards; on that [pg 612] point we have already spoken out. Let us not cheat them of their pasturage; if any man fall sick, when, so to speak, his grave is dug, let us not lift him out of it by misdirected care. That topic now engages our attention.
There is a report among the hear-say stories of Herodotus, touching some tribe of Scythians, that when one of them gets out of health, or passes forty years of age, his friends proceed to slaughter him, lest he become diseased, tough, or unfit for table. These people took their ancestors into their stomachs, we take ours into our lungs—and herein we adopt the better plan, because it is the more unwholesome. We are content, also, now and then to let our friends grow old, although we may repress the tendency to age as much as possible. We do not absolutely kill our neighbors when they sicken; yet by judicious nursing we may frequently keep down a too great buoyancy of health, and check recovery. How to produce this last effect I will now tell you. Gentle mourners, do not chide me as irreverent—
“Auch ich war in Arkadien geboren,”
bear with me, then, and let me give my hints concerning ægritudinary sick-room discipline.