The influence of sewer emanations / by T. Herbert Barker.

  • Barker, T. Herbert (Thomas Herbert), 1814-1865.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of sewer emanations / by T. Herbert Barker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    THE INFLUENCE OF SEWER EMANATIONS. I have lately been making some inquiries as to the influence on the health of animals, of exposure for a long time to air rendered impure by the diffusion through it of emanations from sewers. The full details of these experiments are re- corded elsewhere*; but, as the subject has important sanitary bearings, I send to the Sanitary Review an outline of my researches, that what has been done, small as it is, may become the common property of the profession and the public. The gaseous emanations from sewers have been subjected, to a certain extent, to chemical analysis. There have been thus detected in them sulphuretted hydrogen gas, sulphide of am- monium, carbonic acid, nitrogen, sometimes phosphuretted hydrogen, and various organic living products. Dr. Odling has recently pointed out the diffusion of an alkaline gas through sewer air. The subject demands much more attentive inquiry than has yet been bestowed on it. Such observations as I have made add but little to what has been previously told by the chemists. A physiological rather than a chemical history is before me. For the purpose of experiment, I selected a large cesspool, which received, together with the animal excreta, the liquid * In a MS. essay “ On Malaria”, written for the Fothergillian Prize of the Medical Society of London for 18f)8. H