A guide to the choice of a site for residential purposes : high-lying, dry sites remedial and preventive of disease, and promotive of health and the enjoyment of life, from the evidence of a wide range of eminent authorities in therapeutics, climatology, etc. : considerations founded on geological facts and the benefits derived from residence on high-lying sites on the chalk, which alone, of all sub-soils in the Home Counties, can always be relied upon for dryness, even in an elevated situation / by a member of the Geologists' Association.

  • Gilford, William.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to the choice of a site for residential purposes : high-lying, dry sites remedial and preventive of disease, and promotive of health and the enjoyment of life, from the evidence of a wide range of eminent authorities in therapeutics, climatology, etc. : considerations founded on geological facts and the benefits derived from residence on high-lying sites on the chalk, which alone, of all sub-soils in the Home Counties, can always be relied upon for dryness, even in an elevated situation / by a member of the Geologists' Association. 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.

    19/50 (page 17)
    7 isms was increased.—Report of Sanitary Congress^ Times^ Sep tern ber i-], 1882. Stagnation i? the bane of health, and whether it be in air or in water, stagnation allows time for mixture with injurious com- pounds.—Dr. Carpenter. Moderately elevated situations are the driest, and relatively the warmest, in most if not all localities, particularly in winter ; it is an equally well-established fact that the free circulation of air upon elevated situations renders them relatively cooler in summer ; on the other hand, the want of such free circulation in more sheltered places generally makes them close, hot, and oppressive.—Dr. James Williams. The pent-up valleys in some of the loveliest spots in England are never thoroughly flushed of their air-sewage, in fact, never thoroughly ventilated ; the consequence being that they are often cold, damp, and filled with the air of vegetable decomposition, whilst the heights which wall them in are warm, dry, pure, bracing, and full of health. Frosts affect potatoes and fruit more frequently in the dewy calm air of a valley- bottom than they do on the heights above, where the air is constantly changed. In such valleys man contracts rheuma- tism, the basis of the national heart-disease, and what is of equal importance to know is, that in such valleys all diseases of the zymotic class linger the longest and assume the most aggravated form. The rheumatic and fever miasms hang about the still air of the valleys, and as it were grow in strength with the accumulation of air-sewage. The great majority of heart- disease cases have their origin in rheumatism, and both coincide in their prevalence in the deep unventilated valleys of Devon, Dorset, Hants, and Hereford. Those districts which are entirely hemmed in on 'all sides, and thus do not admit of thorough air-flushing at all, have invariably the very highest mortality from heart-disease, while those districts which admit air-flush- ing on all sides have the lowest mortality. Wherever the highest mortality from heart-disease is indicated, there is to be found the greatest amount of rheumatism, and to rheumatism