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45
Whilst referring to the mortality due to Zymotic diseases,
it may be remarked that both Typhus aud Typhoid Fevers
still hold a very low death-rate in the Sub-district compared
with what they used to do before their repeated invasions
were met by the adoption of an efficient system of sewerage.
There is no reason to believe otherwise than that these
diseases, like Small Pox, might be got rid of, or at all events
be rendered infinitely less fatal by persevering efforts to
remove, by good drainage, and the proper employment of
disinfectants, the specific poison engendering such maladies.
To bring about so desirable a result, nothing suggests itself
as likely to prove of more effect than some improved method
of ventilating the culverts running through the public
thoroughfares, or what would be better, the adoption of a
continuous waterflow to carry off the sewage quickly, and
thus prevent the escape into the atmosphere from the
unadvoidably exposed ventilating gratings, of those gases
which are more than suspected of containing the germs of
fever, and of many other of the Zymotic class of maladies.*
An authority on sanitary subjects thus writes upon the
generation of fever. "The grand fact remains clear, that
the occurrence of Typhoid fever points unequivocally to
defective removal of excreta, and that it (Typhoid fever) is
a disease altogether and easily preventable."
* To encourage the employment of disinfectants, there has been recently
introduced to public notice an invention as simple as it is inexpensive. The apparatus
is called " The Patent Disinfecting Cup," and, as described by the patentees, "consists
of a small portable cup or crucible (costing 6d. each), containing a Chloride internally,
and coated externally with a composition of Sulphur. Its application is extremely
simple, requiring only a lucifer match or light to ignite the external coating, in the
burning of which is produced a quantity of sulphurous acid gas; the heat thus
generated raises the temperature of the contents of the Cup, setting free chlorine gas.
The two gases thus filling the apartment to be disinfected, attack severally the germs
of disease, whether animal or vegetable, floating in the air, effectually destroying
infectious particles, and thus preventing the spread of fever,—as Typhoid, Scarlatina,
Measles, Small Pox, or any other infectious disease."
I have recommended the use of these cups for disinfecting purposes, not only in
rooms, but for the purification of clothing, bedding, &c., after sickness, and think very
highly of them. The uses of this invention have been fully described in a pamphlet
entitled "Infectious Diseases," by Dr. C. T. Pearce, and published by H. Bailliere,
219, Regeut Street. The cups themselves can be procured of any chemist and
druggist at a very small cost, and wholesale of Messrs. Maw and Son, Aldersgate Street.
Their efficiency has also been tested in places infected by sewer gas, which generates
typhoid and other fevers, and they have been found invaluable.