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37
1. Dirt in the Atmosphere.—The impurities cast into the atmosphere
from factory and domestic chimneys shut out a considerable
part of the sunlight, and such atmospheric pollution must, therefore,
be injurious to young growing organisms. Dr. Shaw, the Director
of the Meteorological Office, has estimated that London's 600,000
houses cast into the atmosphere through their chimneys about 300
tons of soot daily. As a result of this gross pollution of the air that
Londoners must breathe for want of something better, "London
loses one-sixth of its sunshine in summer, and presumably also about
the same fraction of its daylight, on account of its smoke, while in
winter its loss amounts to one-half." Sir Thiselton Dyer found
that after a week of fog in London in 1891 there was on the greenhouses
at Kew Gardens a deposit of tarry matter which was
equivalent in amount to six tons to the square mile. To the heavy
pall of smoke that overhangs our large towns must be attributed
some portion of the heavy infantile mortality of those towns.
Hampstead compares favourably with most of the London districts
in this respect, which, no doubt, in some part accounts for its
comparatively low infantile mortality.
2. Dirt in the Streets.—Street cleansing in Hampstead is very
efficiently done, but it may be said that as long as street carriageways
are paved with macadam, and as long as their gross pollution
with unlimited amounts of animal excreta is looked upon as a
matter of course, satisfactory street cleansing will be impossible to
secure. The paving of street carriage-ways with an impervious
substance such as asphalte or tarred macadam, and the exclusion of
the horse from London, are sanitary reforms which are much needed at
the present time. By employing motor carts for municipal purposes,
the Council is encouraging the latter process; and an effective step
in the prevention of infantile mortality would be taken if streets
such as Kelson Street and Lowfield Road, where the mortality
is unusually high, were paved with asphalte or tarred macadam.
3. Dirt round the House.—Unpaved backyards in the poorer
districts are nearly always untidy and dirty. Such yards are
associated with the prevalence of summer diarrhoea, partly, no
doubt, by encouraging the growth of the house-fly, which plays an
important part in the causation of summer diarrhœa by ccnveying