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68
CONGRESS OF THE ROYAL SANITARY INSTITUTE.
At the Edinburgh Conference, from the 20th to 25th July last, Mr. Leo Taylor
and your Medical Officer represented the Port of London Sanitary Authority.
Your Medical Officer was Recording Secretary of the Section of Port Sanitary
Authorities and contributed a paper dealing with the Plague of London, 1665,
in connection with sulphur fumigation. Dr. Picken, of Cardiff, contributed a
paper on fumigation in general and the subjects were discussed from many points
of view by expert and interested authorities, amongst whom the Protectorates and
Colonies of England were well represented.
There can be no doubt that such Conferences lighten the work of a Port Sanitary
Authority in England; the exchange of ideas with representatives from abroad
results in waging war within the enemy's frontier. One can only ascribe the comparative
immunity of London within recent years to the world-wide awakening
on the subject of Plague and other ship-borne diseases, and the confining of these
to their endemic centres.
Another well conducted and very successful section of the Conference was that
in which Veterinary matters were discussed.
The extremely good work done by the Royal Sanitary Institute in the cause
of sanitation will afford an opportunity for its recognition next year, in that the
Conference is to be held in London.
AMSTERDAM CONGRESS.
In the unavoidable absence of the Chairman, Mr. W. Eortescue and your
Medical Officer represented the Port of London Sanitary Authority, on the occasion
of the International Congress in Industrial Hygiene, at Amsterdam, from the 7th
—12th September, also an occasion for examining the large and historical Port
of Amsterdam.
By the courtesy of Dr. W. P. Veldhuizen, the Medical Administrator of the
Port, who placed at our disposal a launch and personally conducted us over the
extensive waterways under his care, an insight into the special problems of this
unique port were gained, while the Harbour-master of Amsterdam, on a further
trip, afforded a close acquaintance with the barging and canal systems in conjunction
with the River Amstel.
The Port extends along an inlet from the Zuider Zee—the Ij, which is a closed
water from which at the western end the locked Noordzee Canal disembouches and
which at a point three miles to the east of Amsterdam is dammed and locked
against the Zuider Zee. The Ij, thus locked, averages only the width of the Thames
at Tilbury or less. A dredged channel gives 30 feet of water. This channel is not
disturbed by any swift current. The scour of the Ij harbour is that produced by
the flow of what surface water is pumped up from the low-lying polders or which
otherwise runs from the meres and canals of Holland proper, particularly by the
Amstel on the south and the Zaan on the north.
The country being below high-water level on the average, and yet having to
rid itself of the rainfall, presents the anomaly that its dammed harbour in the Ij
may have so high a water level that the sluices of Amsterdam's town canals must
be closed against the total output, in which these canals, branches of the Amstel,
have a share. This constitutes a vicious circle requiring close attention to sluices
and regulation of flows, besides which the regulation of Thames-valley floods
becomes relative simplicity when high tide without and flood within-locks coincide.
It was at once a misfortune and good luck to find our visit coincide with a
cyclonic state of weather, such that the sluices of Amsterdam would have to be
closed against the waters of its own harbour, the Ij, should these waters have risen
but two inches further. More than one instance of barges approaching one or
other of the 300 bridges within the Old Town only to find their freeboard an inch
or two in excess of the passage height was observed and heard.
The Old Town of Amsterdam is raised on the Delta of the Amstel into the Ij,
its houses are drained into its canals direct. These canals are the sewers and the
sewage problem, therefore, resolves itself into again carefully directed sluicing