Modern cities : progress of the awakening for their betterment here and in Europe / by Horatio M. Pollock and William S. Morgan.

  • Horatio Milo Pollock
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Modern cities : progress of the awakening for their betterment here and in Europe / by Horatio M. Pollock and William S. Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    superiority over the old horse-drawn omnibus is almost as marked as that of the trolley-car over the old horse-car. The signaling apparatus in use by police and fire departments is another adaptation of elec- tricity that means much to the modern city. The up-to-date fire department with its trained firemen, its instantaneous alarm system, its swift automobiles, its high pressure extinguish- ers and its powerful engines affords protection that thirty years ago would have been deemed impossible. Biological Discoveries.—The intimate relation- ship existing between the various departments of human activities is well illustrated by the transformations wrought in the physical aspects of our cities by the biological discoveries of the latter part of the nineteenth century. The great epoch-making discovery was that of Pasteur that disease was disseminated by means of mi- cro-organisms. These minute bodies, floating through the air on dust particles, or living and multiplying in water and moist earth or being carried about by flies and mosquitoes and finally finding lodgment in the human body were found to be responsible for tuberculosis, te- tanus, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, smallpox, and many other dread diseases. When this fact became known and accepted, efforts to check the spread of the germs [7]