Report on the health of Dublin for the year 1867 : to which is added a yearly report of analysis of food etc.

  • Edward Mapother
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the health of Dublin for the year 1867 : to which is added a yearly report of analysis of food etc. 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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    1. Chemical works.—They have keen frequently inspected, and I have much satisfaction in stating that, owing to the suggestions of the City Analyst and myself, the nuisances they produced have been completely abated. A little chlorine and sulphurous acid gases unavoidably escape, but they are disinfectant in the unwhole- some neighbourhoods in which all the works are situate, and any little inconvenience they occasion may be borne when the employ- ment they give is remembered. During the east winds these gases will blow over the fashionable squares and streets placed eastward in this, different from most other cities. 2. The Gas Company have adopted the oxide of iron purifying- process, advocated by me in 1865, and the noxious escape of sulphuretted hydrogen has therefore almost entirely ceased. 3. Several fat-melting and bone-boiling establishments have been improved by carefully covering the boilers, conducting the vapours through the furnace, raising the chimneys, and compelling the periodical removal of the fetid property. 4. So many factories pour out injurious smoke, that the Com- mittee might with advantage take steps to prevent this evil, by enforcing the raising of chimneys, the adoption of consuming apparatuses, or of stoking carefully pursued. In English towns the penalty is proportional to the number of times in the twenty- four hours when black smoke is seen to issue from the chimney. 5. The slaughter-houses number 107,13 being for pigs, and 17are now disused. Bacon-curers have found that the least decomposition will spoil their produce; hence they keep their yards scrupu- lously clean, and even they prevent the rotting of blood in the sewers, by pouring in brine. These facts alone suggest that the stenches from slaughter-houses are not wholesome for men to breathe, and such stenches are in many slaughter-houses freely given off by the blood cast into the sewers, in which, owing to imperfect fall and water supply, it lodges till it rots, and by the earth into which blood and fluid filth soak—the surface being in most cases very badly paved. While in most well-ordered towns in England and all such on the Continent, in Paris for instance, since 1765, there are cleanly abattoirs ; in Dublin there are 107
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