Foul air in houses : a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, July 4th, 1884 / by Professor Corfield.

  • Corfield (Professor)
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Foul air in houses : a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, July 4th, 1884 / by Professor Corfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ought to be placed outside the house ; because if there is any defect in them, it is better that it should be outside the house than inside it. One of the commonest and best materials for them to be made of, if they are properly ven¬ tilated, is lead ; but it is not the best if they are not pro¬ perly ventilated, because foul air has the property of eating holes through solid lead ; and I have got here several ex¬ traordinary instances of that to show you. Here is an example [producing a piece of pipe], where holes have been eaten through the solid lead by the action of the foul air. Where that is the case the foul air escapes, and causes epidemics of sore throats in the house, and other diseases are also produced by it. Here is another instance of the same thing [producing another specimen]. This is also a piece of a soil pipe ; they are so large here, that you can all, I have no doubt, see the holes which the foul air has produced in the pipe. That was taken out of a house not six weeks ago, in which an outbreak of disease of some kind, or other, caused by the defective condition of that pipe, had occurred. This is a still more interesting piece, because it is an instance of a soil pipe, which is ventilated certainly, but in the wrong place. That fact, you see, has not prevented the collection of foul air, and the consequent formation of holes in the upper part of the pipe, and that shows the necessity of having the ventilating pipe at the top. Soil pipes may either be made defective in that way by foul air, or they may be made originally defective with the pipes merely slipped into one another at the joints without anything at all, or with only a little putty, and no proper cementing or soldering. The best soil pipes are made of lead, and if they are properly made and ven¬ tilated in the first instance, they will last for years. Iron, also, is frequently used for this purpose; but I do not think, where the pipes are inside the house, it is an advisable material to use, because one can never feel quite sure of the joints. You have to join pieces of lead with it from the closets, and one never feels quite sure of a joint between iron and lead. So that I do not think it is a