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20
to every 1000 persons; in the seven subsequent years, when the
sanitary measures were only partially carried out, the mortality fell
to the rate of 19 per thousand; and in the two last years (18561857) it was at the rate of 17 per 1000. The principal measures
adopted were the supply of water, the formation of public sewers,
and the destruction of the greater portion of the cesspools throughout the city.
It has been proved, beyond all doubt, that the effects of cesspool
emanations are very injurious to the public health; and it would
appear, from evidence that has come before me within the past two
or three years, that those who advocate the common bog-hole and
cesspool drainage, or rather those who oppose the formation of
sewers and the consequent drainage of houses into those sewers, are
not aware of the pernicious operations of cesspool gases upon the
human frame.
A scries of experiments on animals, principally dogs, has been
lately made by Dr. Barker, for the purpose of testing the effects of
cesspool air. He placed the animals in a chamber over a cesspool,
with which a communication was formed by means of a tube, and a
lamp was so arranged as to draw a current of cesspool air over the
animals within. After having continued the experiments for a
certain time, Dr. Barker arrived at the conclusion that cesspool
emanations were, when steadily inhaled, poisonous. The dogs subjected to the cesspool air were all more or less affected, and some
were killed. The symptoms were those of intestinal derangement,
followed by prostration, heat of the surface of the body, distaste for
food, great thirst, and those general signs which mark the forms of
continued fever common to the dirty streets and ill-ventilated
houses of the lower classes.
Dr. Barker has here imitated on a small scale on animals, the
operation which is constantly going on throughout the principal
parts of this District. These noxious gases are constantly generated
in the sewers and cesspools, aud they must find some means of
escape; the gases generated in the cesspools cither return through
the drain-pipes into your houses, or, in the event of such outlets
being well trapped and rendered impassable, they permeate the
surrounding soil into the atmosphere, which is at all times charged