Purification of water-carried sewage : data for the guidance of corporations, local boards of health and sanitary authorities / by Henry Robinson and John Charles Melliss.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Purification of water-carried sewage : data for the guidance of corporations, local boards of health and sanitary authorities / by Henry Robinson and John Charles Melliss. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    w a town would be benefited commercially by dealing with its sewage. These things being so, the result was, that precipitation, where you could not possibly get land for irrigation, was the best process, not to make profitable manure, for, in his opinion, profit was not to be made out of the matter deposited from sewage; at all events, he knew of no process that came within any range of profit. He had analyses from Dr. Voelcker of samples of sewage mud taken from several towns, and in no instance did he give the value with the chemical ingre- dients, as far as he recollected, at 20s. per ton; and it must be remembered that he made his analyses by drying the manures which he had tested to an extent greater than was ever done in practice. Whether farmers would give that sum, 20s. per ton, he was not prepared to say; but there was this great fact staring one in the face, that whatever the value of the manure might be, it did not find a ready sale. When he was at Rochdale, he saw thousands of tons which the farmers would not take away. It was evident, therefore, that whatever the value might be, at the present time the price asked did not offer suffi- cient inducement for farmers to buy it. Towns, there- fore, must be content to clarify their sewage at the expense of the rates.’ Water-carried sewage should, in order to secure proper sanitary results, be dealt with within twenty-four hours of its formation, as after that period, decomposition sets in, offensive and dangerous gases are generated, and its defecation is more difficult. This is referred to in the Report of the Local Government Board Committee in 1876, p. xiv. It was also pointed out by Dr. Hofmann, who said, in giving evidence before a Select Committee on Sewage of Towns, in 1862 : ‘The offensiveness of sewage will depend of course upon the season of the year; but on the whole I believe that those who examine B *2
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