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of the absence of those germs which we have associated with
different diseases. It is to be hoped that this report will not be
taken as offering any testimony to the innoxiousness of "sewer
gas." It is an experience as old as sanitation itself that such
gases cause ill health, and if they do not directly induce disease,
they gradually bring about a condition of low vitality
that strongly predisposes to it; man has always avoided
such odours instinctively and intuitively. There are
doubtless toxic poisonous elements (probably gaseous) which
result from the putrefaction and fermentation of sewage matter,
which have not been defined, and which no one is at present
capable of defining: and the absence of the germs of diphtheria
and typhoid from "sewer gas" does not shake the absolute faith
shared by all health officers that "sewer gas" is capable of
inducing those diseases.
The Sewage Farm.—In my last annual report I pointed out
that the Filter Beds upon the Sewage Farm stood in urgent
need of considerable improvement, and I quote the report of
the Sewage Farm Sub-committee which resulted from a
careful investigation into the matter:—
"None of the 16 so-called Filter Beds are, or ever have
been, Fltering Beds in reality, all of them having stiff soil over
almost the whole of their surface. Nos. 1, 2, and 3 are those
which were drained several years before the others. The
drains are fifteen feet apart and an average depth of 2 feet
6 inches and the trenches over the drains were (as the Committee
are informed), filled in with the natural soil. The
remaining 13 beds were drained under contract about three
years ago.
"The principal drains in those beds (also fifteen feet apart)
are five feet deep, the trenches widening to four or five feet on
the surface. These trenches are filled with gravel ballast up
to within nine inches from the surface, but those nine inches
or more were originally filled in to at least that depth with a
mixture of the natural soil and road drift, etc., a material
which is a little more pervious than the stiff clay of the
natural soil.