371

THE LANCET.

LONDON: SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1859.

THE DWELLINGS OF THE POOR.

Bv a large class of our brethren, who have to pursue then

professional visitations on foot, or in an open vehicle, therecan be no doubt that the coming exchange of the winter’!

rain and gusty weather for the warmth and dryness oj

summer will be generally heartily welcomed. Whether it bE

in a great city, or amidst the hills, the inconveniences expe.rienced will be nearly on a par; for between the slush anddamp of a night visit in town, and a ride in the sleet " acrosscountry" at midnight, there will not be much difference tcthose who are ’’ to the manner born." But to some we con-

ceive the exchange will not be so advantageous as it at firstwould appear likely to prove. We refer to those medical men

whose duties bring them much into contact with the poor-tothose who have to visit the houses of our pauper sick-of the

out-patients of hospitals, dispensaries, &c.—to such persons, at

least, who have to perform these duties in " the great metro-polis." We knowit is their daily office to visit houses utterly unfitin every respect for human habitation. One minute from the

largest thoroughfares in London may take the medical officerto the threshold of a den which he has scarcely entered erehe is obliged to pause, unable to grope his way onward throughthe darkness. By the help of past experience, of his stick or hisumbrella, he at length guides himself down into a miserable" kitchen," damper, darker, and more wretched than we careto tell. But the darkness of his journey has been of this useto him: it has rendered his eyes more capable of observa-tion, so that he is enabled to discern through the scantyglimmer of the room the half-naked, miserable mortal lyingupon a few rags in some corner of it. " With a single small" window beneath the grating, never washed and never

" opened-with all the refuse of the house close by, and the" gas and drain pipes of the street on the same level-with no

"possibility of fresh air ever finding admission-with no pos-" sibility of damp ever being excluded, there, in a livinggrave," he visits his patient. Straightway his avocation

takes him to another and to another, and thus day by day hepasses over stairs that threaten to give way beneath his feet,under ceilings whence plaster, perchance, falls upon his head,and along walls whose filth is indescribable, or smeared over

with some delusive paint to conceal the abominations not

otherwise sought to be removed. Now, though winter is

dark, damp, and sloppy, it is cold. Put up with these

inconveniences, and you know the worst when you visit

the poor of the metropolis. Cold is here a great blessing.Doubt it; but wait for the summer, and then visit the samelocalities, and you will be, perhaps, if not drilled to the business,sick- at the unutterable horrors the heat of summer has evoked.

The very street is now an abomination ; you pause, nauseated, iere you pass on between its reeking gutters; you recoil fromthe transit of the sewer-gratings, from the contact of the dis-hevelled, half-naked, and filthy denizens that the warmth ofsummer permits to block up your path. You penetrate therooms, and confess that if your duty was disagreeable in I

winter, in summer it becomes a defilement almost unto

death. A lmost, do we say ?-literally, we may add, if typhusor cholera be prevailing.

This surplusage of evils, which the summer’s warmth inevi-: tably generates in the dwellings of the poor, has just been re-

called to our minds by a perusal of a "Report" connected with"common lodging-houses."‘ In compliance with the direc-tions of the Secretary of State, the Assistant-Commissioner of

’ Police, specially charged with the control of common lodging-houses, prepared a Report from the observations of the inspect-! ing sergeants upon the state of single rooms occupied by fami-lies. From this Report it is evident that all the evils which’ the Acts relative to "common lodging-houses" were intended’ to remedy still exist almost without abatement in single rooms

occupied by families; such rooms, it must be remembered,being exempt from the operation of these Acts. In many cases

’ the law is, without doubt, evaded, lodgers and landlords falselyasserting relationship of parties occupying the same room, and

’ such cases frequently cause much difficulty to the inspectingofficers. Where such relationship really exists, and manyadults are herded together night and day in the narrowestlimits, all decency must be lost, and frightful must be the con-sequences. The Report states-

" In a house, No. 27, Queen-street, Greenwich, having spacefor nineteen persons, there were found twenty-three ; in No. 5room a woman and her son, aged twenty-two, were sleeping inthe same bed, and in No. 7 room a woman and her brother slepttogether. " ...... In another room in the same house (No. 23were found a lad of sixteen sleeping with his mother and sister,a girl of fifteen."......" There are six houses in this court, old,dilapidated, and swarming with vermin ; no yard, kitchen, orwashhouse ; only one closet for twelve families, situate in theopen court, the floor and seat of which are so saturated with

liquid filth as to be unfit for use."......" There are only fourclosets for thirty families; these are in the open court, withoutscreen of any sort to secure the privacy of those who use

them, and the floor and seats are saturated with liquid filth.In the whole of these houses the persons occupying the firstfloor have to pass through the room of those living on theground floor, there being no partition to screen them."

In one particular house (No. 5, Richards-place, Old-street,St. Luke’s) the families were found to be in a most deplorablecondition. The medical officer of the district, when visiting,warned the inmates to leave the house, as it was unfit or

habitation. At the time the visit was made, a child had

recently died, and one adult and one child were then lying ill.This house, considered by the parochial surgeon unfit to livein, had seventeen persons residing in it!

" There is one privy over a cesspool nearly full, and commonto five houses, three of which are in the same filthy and dilapi-dated condition. The water-butt (also common to five houses)is placed in the privy, without lid or cover, and is much toosmall to contain a sufficient supply of water for even onehouse. "

Can we wonder at an occupant of one of these wretched dens

replying to the inspecting sergeant, " I was a strong, healthy" man when I came into this court four years ago; now I am

"fast sinking into the grave; I have scarcely had a day’shealth since I have been here" ?

But if our readers would not object to a history of some still

* Report of the Assistant-Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis,specially charged with the control of Common Lodging-Houses, on the Con-dition of Single Rooms occupied by Families in the Metropolis. (Pursuant toan Address of the House of Lords, dated 25th February, 1859.)

372

NEW YORK QUARANTINE IMBROGLIO.

more repulsive features of the homes of the lower classes in a

great town, and of such things as veritably prove the truth ofour proposition, that if professional and domiciliary visits tothem in winter are disagreeable, in summer they are almostloat7t,3ome, we would refer them to an ably-written reprint*from the London Quarterly Review, which has lately been pub-lished. The author tells, amongst other things, that havingfound in a wretched cellar a large family, to whom he hadexpressed surprise that they should have chosen such a dwell-ing, from its unhealthiness and dampness, one of them repliedin triumph, "Oh, but it is so damp that there are no bugshere." They had learned where life most flourished only toavoid it (?) though, from what we are further told, it seemed verydoubtful whether they would be allowed to rest in peace ; for,according to a former tenant of the same place, she had beendriven from it by the swarms of blackbeetles and rats. The

place, though too damp for bugs, was the cool retreat of " the" bold monsters who came up from the drains, and stared them" in the face as they sat at meals."Not long since, in such a place, a man died, after a pro-

tracted illness. Three children, one an adult girl, and hiswife, shared the same dwelling, and when his last breath haddeparted there was no other place for the corpse to lie in. Thewidow, a few days after her husband’s funeral, whilst hersunken features expressed how that foul presence had told onher wearied frame, used a phrase to explain the nausea whichshe had suffered which we refrain from repeating, but whichwe cannot forget."-p. 17.From the kitchen to the garret the steps are but few : let m

ascend :-" In one of these houses we had frequently called to see a

sick person; in the garret there lay a man stretched by con-sumption on his wretched bed. As we glanced round theroom, we could not help asking if it were not infested withvermin in summer. I You can’t sleep here in the hot weather,’was the reply. ’ The heat brings out the bugs from the cracksin the wall, until we hardly know how to bear ourselves. But,’he added, pointing to a crazy wooden platform, barely largeenough for a dovecot, on the roof, ’I sometimes get out and ’

pass the night there. It’s a nice place when there is any atmo- ’

sphere, but it is generally all smoke."-p. 34.Can we wonder that, in the words of his wife, they were often

in the morning that tired, that they knew not how to go to work ?Of the wretchedness of the dwellings of the poor, none have

greater experience than our profession, and none know betterthat their abodes in general violate all the known laws

of physical being. The main causes of this state of things are,on the one hand, the avarice of owners, and on the other, the

poverty or debasement of occupants. The only hope of im-

provement appears ;to reside in some legislative enactment.Unless some legal provision is made, the Assistant Commissionerof Police assures us that the operation of the Common Lodging-houses Act will be very incomplete, and that single rooms willcontinue to be fertile causes of moral anl of physical degrada-tion. As Mr. LEACH points out, we must have authoritativeinterference to compel landlords to place heir houses in ahabitable condition; for, at present, this anomaly has been

produced,-namely, the WQJ’S6 the condition of the property, thegreater is the return which it yields. How this almost incre-

dible state of things has arisen, we must refer to Mr. LEACH’Spamphlet (p. 35) to explain.

* The Dwellings of the Poor. By Henry Leach, M.A., Curate of St. Thomas’s,Portman-square pp 40 London . Heylin 1858

Ix continuance and conclusion of our sketch of the " New

York Quarantine imbroglio," (THE LANCET, ante, p. 351,) weproceed to point out the results of the mismanagement of theMarine Hospital of the chief American port. The influx of

yellow-fever vessels had commenced as early as in April last,and had continued without interruption. With infected vesselsthus accumulating in the port, and infected persons and pro-perty increasing in the hospital, &c., the town of Castleton,which communicated with the grounds of the quarantine esta-, blishment upon its eastern margin, began to take alarm, know-ing from a sad experience of the past what might be expected.The Board of Health of Castleton considered the matter, and de-termined to enforce a Statute or- Act which the law had

granted them. The Supervisor and Justices issued the follow.ing regulations :-

’ * No person shall pass from within the quarantine enclosureinto any other part of the said town, nor upon the said ferry-boats, nor shall any baggage, baggage freight, or other articlesbe brought from within the said enclosure to any other part ofthe said town, nor carried upon the said ferry-boats within thesaid town.

*’ Neither the health officer, deputy nor acting deputy healthofficer, physician of the Marine Hospital, nor any person intheir or either of their employments within the quarantineenclosure, or engaged in visiting infectious or quarantined ves-sels, nor the United States boarding officer, shall come intoany part of the said town outside of the said enclosure; and noperson going into such enclosure shall be allowed to come outuntil farther action of this Board, nor shall there be any com-munication or intercourse with such enclosure without thewritten permission of the health officer of the said town, statingthat, in his opinion, it will not endanger the public health sotn do-"

Copies were served upon Dr. THOMPSON, the health officer ofthe port, and on Dr. BISSELL, the physician of the MarineHospital; yet Dr. MUNDY, the health officer of Castleton, tes-

tifies that no attention was paid to the orders, and Dr. THOJlIP.SON swore, " I disregarded them." In fact, there is not anyevidence showing that admittance was, even in one single in-stance before the fire, refused to persons from without, andthere is ample proof that verbal or written passes were givento the inmates to go beyond the walls. In the result it will be

seen that the Board of Health of Castleton were not too quickin their precautions. On the 15th of July, two days after the

adoption of these regulations, KRAMM, the deputy on the"iron scow," who lived in the village only a few rods fromthe hospital, sickened and died at his own house. His wife

soon followed him. Then a Mrs. NEIL died, as also a Mr.HENDERsoN. Thirteen others were attacked, of whom threedied of yellow fever, in the same locality. Meanwhile the

disease appeared in New Brighton, where occurred four cases,two being fatal. A case or two, it is stated, happened else.where. Now, the season of the year was at hand when theterrible disease in question is known to be most malignant. It

was remembered with sadness that in 184S there had been

nearly two hundred cases along the eastern shores of the

island; in 1850 about forty cases had occurred; and on theother side of the " barrows " one hundred and eighty more, ina. population barely exceeding five or six times that number-a proportion equal to nearly a hundred thousand cases in thecity of New York. Again, then, the disease had appeared,and in connexion with the workpeople who had passed fromwithin the quarantine establishment to the town and with those

373

M. VELPEAU ON THE CANCER-QUACK.

who had mixed with them. Again, and in spite of the judicialorders of the government of the town, isolation from the generalcommunity of the work and workmen of the focus of poison wasrefused to be adhered to. What course, then, should now be

adopted ? It was determined by the townspeople to destroy thewhole establishment. Accordingly, the place was assailed bynight, but no unfair disguise used, nor violence threatened, byany of the assailants. The inmates were all suffered to escape,and those patients who were unable to do so were carried toa place of safety, treated with care, (and all recovered exceptone,) and made no complaint afterwards. The buildings &c.

were then set fire to. For this deed, Mr. RAY TOMKINS andMr. J. C. THOMPSON, representing the Castleton delinquents,were tried in September last, before Judge METCALF, forarson; but it was not until a few weeks back that the Judgegave his decision. We have read it with much interest and

attention, but can only find room to lay before our readers thefollowing 1.esumé of it:-

"In the first place, a case of imminent danger existed, andno member of the community of Castleton could say that hemight not be the next victim of the next hour. In the second

place, no man can be deprived of his liberty, no man of life,without the State specially adjudge it; and as each man hasfor himself an equal right to life, he has an equal claim uponthe State for the protection of that right. Thirdly, the pro-tection of that right had been repeatedly threatened, and withfatal results; and it was again, in spite of the law, trampledupon. Fourthly, the only way in which life could be renderedsafe appeared, not unreasonably to those threatened, to dependupon the immediate removal or destruction of the threateningagency." "

"When, therefore, the Courts adopt the principle, that inobedience to the maxim that the public safety is the supremelaw-Salus populi suprema lex-private buildings may betaken down, as in the cholera season at Albany, or blown up,as at the great fire in New York, they lay the foundation forthe a fortiori argument, that public buildings may be torndown or blown up for the safety of the public......Undoubtedlythe city of New York is entitled to all the protection in thematter that the State can give, consistently with the health ofothers; she has no right to more. Her great advantages arefollowed by corresponding inconveniences-her great publicwerks by great expenditures-her great foreign commerce bythe infection it brings. But the Legislature can no more ap-portion upon the surrounding communities her dangers thanher expenses-no more compel them to do her dying than topay her taxes: neither can be done......It is undoubtedly truethat nothing which the law sanctions can be a nuisance;’ butwhere the Legislature authorizes or commands that which theConstitution forbids, its statutes are not law, and sanctionnothing. For all these reasons I think the prisoners should bedischarged." "

Mr. ANTHON, the counsel for the defendants, was loudlycheered on his way homewards. The decision, of course, wasreceived somewhat differently in the city of New York towhat it was at Staten Island.

NEXT to the glory of wisdom is the merit of modesty: andit is hardly less difficult gracefully to recognise and fittinglyto atone for an error, than it is always to avoid erring. M.

VELPEAU had taken a false step in admitting to his wards anegro adventurer, who, with an impudence only equalled by hisignorance, assumed to have a specific for curing cancer, and toarrest a disease of which he did not even know the external

characters by means which he did not possess. This unedu-

cated fellow, who pretended to be employing a vegetable’’ 9 specific " which he brought from the Indies ten years since,but who simply used compounds prepared by the chemists ofthe place, received at once an immense moral support from the

supposed countenance thus lent to his proceedings; and hebecame the fashion. But if M. VELPEAU had placed himselfin a position as painful to himself and to the friends of scienceas it became antagonistic to humanity, he has not failed tomake that open amende which was to be expected alike frohis conscience and his courage. He gave, this week, an ac-count of M. VRIES’ failures to the Academy. He said,-

<<If I had known that trials such as these of mine had beenmade with a negative result, by the same individual, at thCancer Hospital in London; that he had done the same inthe practice of M. Bazin at the Hospital St. Louis : if I hadknown of the mystic lucubrations of M. Vries in the famoustemple of the Champs Elysees,&mdash;I certainly should not havetaken the trouble to examine pretensions of such a stamp; but,ignorant of these details, and partly trusting to the good faithof these persons, I had the weakness to listen to them, and toopen to them the doors of an honourable institution."

Sixteen patients were placed under the care of this empiric.One died at the end of ten days; in all the others the canceroustumours have continued to increase in size and to multiply innumber; and at the end of two months the patients are in assad a state as though no treatment whatever had been adopted.M. VELPEAU declares, then, his absolute conviction of the

falsity of this man’s pretensions-a conviction founded upon ahost of facts and reasonings, of which, however, the first twoor three are more than enough. The first is, because M. VRIEShas not cured one of the patients confided to him in Paris orLondon. Then, that his so-called tropical remedy or specificvaries according to time and place: in India, it was a vegetablecataplasm; in England, aloes or iodine; in Paris, a vegetablepowder, with nitre or alumen for the pills, and sugar or cam-phor for the powders. Again, because M. VRIES has no ideaof what is a cancer, or of the mode of examining a patient;and, in the presence of a patient dying in the last stage ofcancer, would say, " This patient is improving-on the roadto cure." Then, because nothing happened which he pro-mised; and for many other reasons unnecessary to quote.The moral of this scandal is one which we have often en-

forced. It is not the duty of men of science to undertakeinvestigations of pretensions obviously absurd. The rogu

always profit, and science and humanity suffer, when anyparley is allowed to them. These are affairs which belong tothe police, and not to hospital surgeons and physicians. It

is a false notion which induces any member of an hospital staffto introduce one of the hundred loud-tongued quacks who prayfor trial into the wards of his hospital. Hospital patientought not to be made the touchstone of imposture. Moreover,it is a vain hope to crush the false arts of these men by pub-lishing their failure. It is their secret to live by failure-toconvert failures into successes-like VplES, to declare the

dying convalescent, and the living saved by a miracle. It is

their secret to thrive on denunciation, and to flourish in that

atmosphere of ignominy which suffocates better men. Theyare persecuted, worried, hunted down, driven out, by rea sonof the cures they made: these are the calumnies of their

enemies. The end of such experiments is always disastrous to

374

A CERTIFICATE ON TRIAL.

the interests of humanity and of truth. These are investiga-tions which are not to be meddled with except by the ministersof justice; for it is only when punishment follows detectionthat any good end is likely to be served.

.

IT may be accepted as an axiom that, in spite of the time-honoured antitheses which contrast mercy with justice, thetwo can never be in direct opposition. If any man be inclined

to do that which he thinks kind to his neighbour, but yetknows it to be unjust to another, it were well that he should

be guided by a horror of injustice rather than by the blindimpulse of benevolence. Constant appeals are made to the

good-nature of medical practitioners by persons who solicit

certificates of their disorders, their debility, their need of

repose, and of change of air. The urgency with which these

requests are pressed places the surgeon in a difficult positionwhen the demand exceeds the strict limits of veracious state-

ments. His duty is, nevertheless, very plain, however unplea-sant. No considerations of personal inconvenience, and no

feeling of sympathy, can justify even constructive exaggerationin the wording of medical certificates. The uses which theyjustly serve for the really suffering are so important that

whatever tends to lessen their authority is likely to injuriouslyaffect claims of the most touching and urgent character. The

surgeon who grants a certificate of injury, of disease, of in-capacity for labour, or what not, should never forget that, asthe value of his certificate is enhanced by the just esteem whichthe public have for the character of his brethren as men ofhonour and veracity, so also will their reputation suffer by anunbefitting laxity of expression in the statement of the factswhich he pretends to attest. These considerations are, it is

true, more than sufficiently trite and homely; but it cannot besupposed that they are always fully present to the minds ofthose who grant certificates de convenance.But if even slightly equivocal expressions and phrases capa-

ble of other than the correct interpretation should be strictlyavoided in wording certificates by those who desire to maintaintheir own integrity and the honour of the body in which theyare included; and if errors and exaggerations which, in otherinstances, might be held trifling and venial, become serious andblameable in such documents, their direct misrepresentationand open mendacity which, under any circumstances, inflict so

deep a shame, assume characters of peculiar disgrace. It was

not without great pain that we saw, on a recent trial, a me-dical practitioner avow that he had written a certificate bywhich a public company was induced to pay a handsomeweekly sum, and which untruly set forth that a certain inca-pacity for labour, on the part of a person named in it, was dueto recent accident, when, in fact, it was known to be the resultof old-standing scrofulous disease. We cannot conceive a

position more humiliating than that which arises from such aconfession; and we feel bound to endorse the indignant com-ments of the counsel, who spoke with just severity of the breachof honour and faith thus avowed by a member of a professionin whom an unlimited confidence is needed, and who have bytheir acts so nobly justified the trust which has always beenreposed in them.

THE recent Quarterly Return of the Registrar-General hasattracted considerable attention, and it seems not unlikely,

from this and other circumstances, that the long-disputedsewage question will be brought to some conclusion. Wehave

more than once occupied ourselves with this important sub-ject in leading articles, and propose to take this opportunity ofagain reverting to it.The Report points out the essential connexion between the

sewage question and agriculture." Science has demonstrated that fermenting human excre-

ment is a poison in and near human dwellings; and chemistryhas shown that the same elements, in other states, becomegrasses, grain, fruits, and flowers by the natural magic of theearth....... Otherwise a few lines in the first Code Napoleonmight have abolished French cesspools, and have directed theFrench guano to be deposited every day in the French soil, andby such a law have conferred more benefit on France than shederives from nine-tenths of the articles of that famous digest."There is a passage in the epistles of Busbequius, ambassador-

from the Emperor Rudolph to Sultan Suliman, who ruled

over the Ottoman empire in the time of its highest grandeur.Everyone who was a spectator of the conduct of the Turks inthe Crimea will bear witness to their want of cleanliness in

this particular, but it was otherwise in the palmy days of their

power. Busbequius expresses something like amazement at theextreme cleanliness of their camps.

" BesiOes," says he, "they are wonderfully cleanly; nonoisome smell to offend eye or ear; all their ordure they buryunderground, or throw it far enough off when they have occa.sion to ease nature; they dig a pit with a spade, and then burytheir excrements, so that there is no ill smell at all."

So that it might almost appear as if national greatness hadsome relation to national cleanliness.

The Registrar-General proposes to legislate in some suchstyle as this:-

" Seeing that English guano is a fertilizing manure in thesoil, and is a loathsome, shameful, and poisonous nuisance inor near dwelling-houses, be it enacted that the retention of

any such manure in cesspools, in privies, in middens, or in anyother form whatsoever, in or near a dwelling-house, shallrender the owner or occupier of the place in which it is foundliable to a fine not exceeding shillings per day." Andhe adds : "If the municipal and parish authorities have thenecessary powers to facilitate the working of the measure in-trusted to the police for execution, it would speedily effect arevolution in the sanitary condition of England." "

That the sanitary questions connected with the disposal ofsewage are closely connected with the agricultural economicsof its use, is obvious; and great indeed have been the discre-

pancies both of fact and opinion on the matter, as anyone mayconvince himself who will take the trouble to read the Trans-actions of the Society of Arts for the last few years.Simply to get rid of the sewage is comparatively an easy

matter, even in many large towns, at least in this country andin most parts of Europe. These are nearly all on the banks ofrivers; they admit of drainage: granted, therefore, a sufficientsupply of water, establish waterclosets everywhere, and thewhole of the sewage can be swept into the rivers and thenceinto the sea. This was the favourite scheme of the officials of

the Board of Health, who would admit of no modification ofthe privy or cesspool system, but regarded it everywhere asan unmixed evil. Perhaps some of these gentlemen were 2tnpeu <7oc<f!’KMaM’M, - i. e., saw their own ideas athwart all

others. At any rate, it soon began to appear that mere drainagewas not in itself a fit means of disposing of sewage. In the

375

SEWAGE, AND ITS APPLICATION TO AGRICULTURE.

case of towns near the sea, or even in that of London, the

sewage may thus be got rid of; in the latter case, at vast ex-

pense, only by carrying it out to sea. But how deal with

the great inland manufacturing towns seated on small rivers ?The Royal Commissioners, in a Report, 1858, which we com-mented on in this journal, remark-

"Many rivers, especially in the crowded districts of thenorth of England, pass through several towns in their courseseawards, and, receiving from each its complement of sewage-filth, are even now little better than sewers themselves, al-

though comparatively few of those places have yet carried outany complete works of water-supply and sewerage. The in-

creasing offensiveness of the Medlock and the Irwell at Man-chester, of the Mersey at Stockport, and the Tame at Birming-ham, and of many other rivers, proves that a national evil isfast growing up which demands immediate and serious atten-tion." "

They then say of the Tame at Birmingham, that at dryseasons it may without impropriety be supposed to contain asmuch sewage as water. Here is a pretty state of things ! In

other words, the mere drainage system, without a corrective,errs in two ways. In the first place, it converts many of ourrivers into sewers, and inflicts an evil worse than that whichit was intended to remove; and in the next place, it wastesthe sewage. It is shown by Mr. Chadwick, and by the Com-missioners in the Report just quoted, that the disposal of thesewage for agricultural purposes is the necessary complementof the drainage system. Of the enormous gain not thus obtainedmany calculations have been made. Mr. Lawes has stated

that in one generation, by the present system, something likethirty millions sterling must be washed into the Thames.* Butthis estimate must be incorrect, and below the mark; for ac-

cording to the experiments of M. Barral, fifty-five per cent. ofthe azote consumed in the food exists in the excrements, and

nearly all the phosphates must be there. According to Pro-fessor Way, the sewage of London ought to manure 400,000acres of land, or very nearly the area of Surrey.

Matters, -it appears to us, stand thus:-Either the sewagemust be removed mechanically in the liquid state, and distri-buted on the land, as proposed by Mr. Chadwick and others;or disinfected, and so distributed; or its solid constituents andactive ingredients deodorized and precipitated, and the solidmatter utilized; or the whole sewage carried to a distance andthere deodorized; or, as proposed in the case of London, car-ried far out to sea; or a return be made to the old cesspoolsystem somewhat modified. We have not space to discuss all

these alternatives. All attempts to deodorize, with such re-sults as to render the products commercially profitable, havefailed. Mr. Thompson, secretary to the Manchester SewageGuano Company, states that filtering through charcoal failedin arresting valuable parts of the manure, although it perfectlyclarified the water. The charcoal was rendered only worth25s. a ton, or little more than its cost price. In the same way

by the deodorizing process of Mr. Wickstead, carried on atLeicester, where lime is the agent employed, the dried bricksof the precipitate formed by the lime are only worth about 4s.a ton, although the sewage water is almost completely clari-

* The fishermen of the Thames were at one time bound to present everytenth salmon to the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster. This custom lastedtill the fourteenth century. We wonder how far down the river, now, fish areto be found. The destruction of fish is one of the evils of the unmitigatedsystem of drahiing. Until within the last few years ships watered in thepool! !

fied; in fact, the lime will have a tendency to drive off am-monia, the most valuable portion of the contents of the sewage.Mr. Thompson, however, states that the Company found iteconomical to deodorize night-soil received in pans providedwith charcoal, and remove it. Mr. Walker has shown, wethink, that the liquid sewage of Rugby can be economicallydistributed by machinery over land, and that without injuryto health; in fact, the absorption takes place with extreme

rapidity. The matter, however, is very different in the case

of large towns. Mr. Chadwick believes in the possibility ofremoving the whole sewage of the metropolis by steam power,and utilizing it on the principle of the water-cart. Accordingto Mr. Walker, from his experience with the sewage of Rugby,500 acres can utilize the sewage of 1000 houses; but he believesthat 200 acres could be usefully manured with such a quantityof sewage. At present, however, there are such conflicting.opinions as to this mode of getting rid of sewage that reallyno positive conclusion can be arrived at on the point.Of the numerous modes of disinfecting, we may notice the

proposal of Dr. Angus Smith, (Journal of the Society of Arts,Sept. 10th, 1858.) He proposes to disinfect, as the sewage

passes, by streams of sulphurous and earbolic acids. Accord-

ing to the statement made, two pounds of sulphurous and oneounce of carbolic acid will disinfect the excrements of 300

persons for one day at a cost of about one penny, and for ar

city of two millions and a half about .612,675 per annum.The proposal of this writer has been made by many others-

viz., to separate real sewage from the watery part, and pump.off the former, disinfect it, and send it off by railway trucks.One of the great difficulties in dealing with the sewage of largetowns is its extreme state of dilution. Thus, according to Pro-fessor Way, the proportion of the solid and liquid in Londonsewage is as 1 to 1400. But such a mode of separation wouldrequire an entirely new system of pipes, and would be verycostly.The Royal Commission, in its Report, which we reviewed in

THE LANCET of May lst, 1858, proposed a sort of intermediateprocess between that of Mr. Wickstead, as carried out at

Leicester, and the removal of the whole liquid sewage, and itsapplication in the crude state to the land. This propositionwas, to receive the sewage in large reservoirs under embank-ments occupying both sides of the river, and to treat it withlime as at Leicester ; but instead of drying the precipitate, topump off the sludge, and then dispose of it, we are not ex-actly informed how, probably in tanks propelled by steam.The numerous meadows, both above and below, by the sideof the Thames, would form appropriate receptacles for such-manure, which is, of course, best adapted for grass land.

THE

BILL FOR THE REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS,MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS IN IRELAND.

(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)THERE is a Bill for the above purposes, brought into the

House of Commons by Lord Naas and the Attorney-Generalfor Ireland, at present awaiting its second reading. In it thereis not only another attack made upon the medical profession, inthe shape of compulsory taxation, but the Bill itself will, likethe English Act for the same purposes, be found to be prac-