Sanitary assurance : a lecture at the London Institution / by F. de Chaumont.
- De Chaumont, Francis, 1833-1888.
- Date:
- 1881
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Sanitary assurance : a lecture at the London Institution / by F. de Chaumont. 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.
19/28 page 17
![be published. We should be very grateful to Dr. De Chaumont, who in our own country is perhaps the greatest living authority for laying down simple rules that should guide lis in the arrangement for the due sanitation of our houses. I have not been in this country very long, but long enough to become aware of what a great and crying want this sanitation of dwellings has become. I know, and see constantly, how people suffer from the want of it, and it has been always a marvel to me in the present state of culture, intelligence, and education how people can have remained so blind as they do remain to the evils that surround them. My fii'm belief is that it is from want of appreciation of the nature of the causes that produce these evils, that proper remedies arc not applied. Many people, not seeing in their own households what is happening, therefore do not believe it. It is, consequently, necessary that knowledge should be spread abi'oad. This was one of the reasons why this association was formed, and it was this which induced me to take part in it. I fervently hope it will succeed, and that many other similar associations will spring up ; for in this great population of Loudon—4,000,000 —larger than that of Scotland, what can one association do P We might have a dozen or twenty such to spread the knowledge of how houses may be kept healthy. If people understand that foial emanations come from drains; and that the water we drink, if connected with that with which we flush our sewers, will cause typhoid fever, sore throat, and all the train of diseases which Dr. De Chaumont has so eloquently described, they will the more readily accept the aid of a Sanitary Assurance Association. Mr. Brudenell Carter said : The vote of thanks to Professor De Chaumont, for the interesting paper he has laid before us with such remarkable clearness and felicity, needs no words of mine to make it acceptable to you, but I think it may possibly be of some interest if I venture to trespass ui^on you for two or three minutes by narrating such illustrations as have come within the scope of my personal experience of the great value that this association may be to actual or intending householders. A good many years ago I was in treaty for a house in Glouccstei'shire, and I received a visit from a gentleman who was a stranger to me, who said, The people who formerly lived in that liou.«e were friends of mine, and they left it on account of its intolerable smells. The house had been for some time vacant, and there were no smells. I went to the proprie- tress and said, I hear this of your hou.se. Will you allow me before I enter into possession to have a thorough investigation made of its condition ? The investigation was made according to my own humble lights. I was told that the smell was chiefly in the drawing-room, a room on the ground floor. I tcok up the floor, and found that underneath there was an inferior drawing-room, inhabited chiefly by rats, which had been not only their drawing-room, but their refectory and nurseiy, into which there opened many passages leading by subterranean ways to adjacent stables, farm yards, and other receptacles of more or less odoriferous material. Well, I had all this cleared away. I had the openings made good with concrete and powdered glass, and slates laid down, and, unfortunately, I was therewith content. I took the house. Shortly afterwards the smells returned in their full vigour, c7]-:d I was reluctantly driven to the conclusion that, after all, the rats could only have been liumble assistants in •the general work of stench that was going on. I investigated further, and found that the principal soil pipe of the house descended in the back wall, and was embedded in its thickness until it reached just below the ground level; it then made a turn at a right angle to go into a drain or sewer, and where the vertical descending portion of the pipe joined the horizontal portion, the local workman or shore hand as he would probably be called, had contented himself with bringing the horizontal and vertical pipes as nearly](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22278655_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
