A manual of practical hygiene / by Edmund A. Parkes ; edited by F.S.B. Francois de Chaumont.

Date:
1878
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of practical hygiene / by Edmund A. Parkes ; edited by F.S.B. Francois de Chaumont. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    broko out at the Fort of Lascaris, from the opening of a drain, other affections were simultaneously developed, viz., diarrhoea, dysentery, slight pyrexial disorders, and diseases of the primary assimilative organs. A close examina- tion and analysis of the affections produced by the inhalation of sewer air, would probably much enlarge this list; and the class of affections resulting from this cause, to which it may be difficult to assign a nosological name will be found, I bebeve, to be essentially connected with derangement of the digestive rather than with the pulmonary system. Dr Herbert Barker* has attempted to submit this question to experiment by conducting the air of a cesspool into a box where animals were confined. The analysis of the air showed the presence of carbonic acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, and ammonium sulphide. The reaction of the gas was usually neutral, sometimes alkaline. The gas was sometimes offensive, so that organic vapours were probably present; but no analysis appears to have been made on this point. Three dogs and a mouse were experimented on; the latter was let down over the cesspool, and died on the fifth day. The three dogs Avere confined in the box; they all suffered from vomiting, purging, and°a febrde condition, which, Dr Barker says, resembled the rudder forms of continued fever common to the dirty and ill-ventilated homes of the lower classes of the community. But the effects required some time, and much gas for their production. Dr Barker attributes the results, not to the organic matter, but to the mixture of the three gases, carbonic acid, sidphuretted hydrogen, and sulphide of ammonium, and speciaUy to the latter two. The effect on the men who work in sewers which are not blocked, or temporarily impure from exceptional disengagement of sulphuretted hydrogen from any cause,! has been subject to much debate. The air in many sewers in London is not very impure j the analyses of Letheby and Mdler have shown that generally the amount of carbonic acid is very bttle in excess of that in the external air, and that there is hardly a trace of sulphuretted hydrogen, or of foetid organic effluvia. The air in the house drains is often, in fact, more impure than that of the main sewers. This is the case also in other places, and is to be accounted for by the numerous openings in the sewers, from the porosity of the walls, from the continual ventdation produced by the air being drawn into houses, and from the amount of water in the sewers being often so great, and its flow so rapid, as to materially lessen the chances of generation of gas. The evidence is, on the whole, opposed to the view that sewer-men suffer in health in consequence of their occupation. Thackrah states]; that sewer-men are not subject to any disease (apart from asphyxia), and are not short-lived. He cites no evidence. Parent-Duckatelet^ came, on the whole, to the same conclusion as regards the sewer-men of Paris in 1836. He says that there are some men so affected by the air of sewers that they can never work in them; but those who can remain suffer only from a little ophthalmia, lumbago, and perhaps sciatica. They consider otherwise their occupation not only innocent, but as favourable to health. The only fact adverse to this seemed to be that the air of the sewer greatly *On Mnlaria and Miasmata, 1863, p. 176, etseq. f Fatal cases have occurred both in London and Liverpool sewers from the rapid evolution of SH2, either from gas liquid, or, in Liverpool, from the action of acids passing into the sewers, and meeting with sulphide of calcium in the refuse derived from alkali manufactories. ♦The Effects of Arts, Trades, and Professions on Health, 1832, p. 118. § Hygiene Publique, vol. i. p. 247 (1836). The conclusion of Parent-DuchAtelct are not entirely,justified by his evidence. The number of men he examined was small, and many of them had been employed for a short time only in the sewers; it also appeared that a consider- able number had actually suffered from bilious and cerebral affections. (See the former editions of this work.)