Bad drains : and how to test them : with notes on the ventilation of sewers, drains, and sanitary fittings, and the origin and transmission of zymotic disease. / cby R. Harris Reeves.

  • Reeves, R. Harris.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bad drains : and how to test them : with notes on the ventilation of sewers, drains, and sanitary fittings, and the origin and transmission of zymotic disease. / cby R. Harris Reeves. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    A gulley trap was devised and fixed in the Pave- ment, Finsbury, in 1834, and in 1840 nine hundred of the gulleys had been trapped with a view to remedy the evil, with the following results. It became apparent even before that number was fixed, that the sewers were becoming dangerous to workmen to entei, and the gases generated found vent by the house drains (then generally untrapped) into dwellings. [It is quite evident that the compression of gases which takes place in the sewers by the rising and falling of the liquid and sewage flowing in them was not then known, or this experiment by closing the gulleys and ventilating the sewers through the house traps would not have been attempted. At any rate the first experiment in sewer ventila- tion in the City cannot be said to have been a successful one, as it left matters worse than before.] To obviate this, ventilating shafts connecting directly with small iron gratings in the centre of the carriageways were formed: this mode of venti- lating was also first adopted in the City, and the system of trapping (with numerous modifications in manner) and ventilating the sewers in the centre of the carriageways spread through the length of the metropolis. Can it be said that this alteration was an improve- ment in sewer ventilation ? D 2