The Sanitary Drainage of Houses and TownsHurd and Houghton; Cambridge, The Riverside Press, 1876 - 336 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
accumulation adopted Aldgate pump ammonia amount apparatus arrangement brick carried cause cellar cent cess-pools charcoal cholera cleansing closet condition connected contained contents cost Croydon cubic feet danger death-rate decomposition deposits diphtheria discharge disease disinfecting district drainage dysentery earth-closet effect Elisha Harris emptied engineer England entirely epidemic escape excrement excreta fæces Figure filth flow flushing foul gases house drains household hundred impurities inch per hour infection land less Liernur liquid locomobile man-hole manure means moisture Moule's nearly necessary odor offensive ordinary organic matter outlet pail Phosphoric acid pipe sewers pneumatic poison population practical prevent privy produce public sewer quantity rain fell removal reservoir sanitary says secure sewage sewer gas sewerage slops soil pipe storms street reservoirs sub-irrigating sufficient surface tank tion town typhoid fever vault ventilation village waste water trap water-closet whole
Popular passages
Page 109 - For producing malaria it appears to be requisite that there should be a surface capable of absorbing moisture, and that this surface should be flooded or soaked with water and then dried; the higher the temperature and the quicker the drying process, the more plentiful and the more virulent the poison that is evolved.
Page 326 - With some structural alterations in the privies (the principles of which are stated in their proper place in this report) and such needed supervision as will now be obtained from the sanitary authority appointed under the Public Health Act, 1872, the arrangements at Eastwick may be regarded as a pattern to be followed by villages and small towns similarly circumstanced. " From what has already been said it may be inferred that the
Page 210 - No privy-vaults can be connected with the sewers except through an intervening catch-basin, and the discharge pipe of the vault must be high enough above its bottom to effectually prevent anything but the liquid contents of the vault from passing into the drain. 9. The inside of every drain, after it is laid, must be left smooth and perfectly clean throughout its entire length. 10. In case it shall be necessary to connect a drain pipe with a public sewer, where no junction is left in such...
Page 159 - The absorbing powers of charcoal are so great that some have doubted whether it is really a disinfectant. This opinion has probably arisen from imperfect views of its modus operandi, since it not only imbibes and destroys all offensive emanations, and oxidizes many of the products of decomposition, but there is scarcely a reasonable ground of doubt remaining that it does really possess the property of a true disinfectant, acting by destroying those lethal compounds upon which infection depends.
Page 35 - ... in regard of Filth, that agents which destroy its stink may yet leave all its main powers of disease-production undiminished. Whether the ferments of disease, if they could be isolated in sufficient quantity, would prove themselves in any degree odorous, is a point on which no guess need be hazarded ; but it is certain that in doses in which they can fatally infect the human body they are infinitely out of reach of even the most cultivated sense of smell, and that this sense (though its positive...
Page 37 - is more certain than the general meaning of high diarrhoeal death-rates. The mucous membrane of the intestinal canal is the excreting surface to which nature directs all the accidental putridities which enter us. Whether they have been breathed, or drunk, or eaten, or sucked up into the blood from the surface of foul sores, or directly injected into blood-vessels by the physiological experimenter, there it is that they settle and act. As wine ' gets into the head ' so these agents get into the bowels.
Page 211 - In no case will drain-pipes be allowed to rest on wood or other perishable material. 12. The back-filling over drains, after they are laid, must be puddled, and, together with the replacing of ballast and paving, must be done within forty-eight hours after the completion of that part of the drain lying within the public way, and done so as to make them at least as good as they were before they were disturbed, and to the satisfaction of the Commissioners and their Engineer ; and the owner will be...
Page 84 - After a few months' residence in the house, the clergyman's wife died of fever. He soon married again; and the second wife also died of fever, within a year from the time of marriage. His children were sick. He occupied the house about two years. The wife of his successor was soon taken ill, and barely escaped with her life.
Page 263 - The earth-closet, intelligently managed, furnishes a means of disposing of excrement without nuisance and apparently without detriment to health. " (2.) In communities the earth-closet system requires to be managed by the authority of the place, and will pay at least the expenses of its management. " (3.) In the poorer classes of houses, where supervision of any closet arrangements is indispensable, the adoption of the earth system offers special advantages.
Page 200 - Hows copiously until the chamber is empty to the depth below which solid matters are permitted to accumulate, to be occasionally cleared out on raising the pan B. The purpose of this apparatus is to prevent the constant trickling away of the small stream usually flowing from the house with too little movement to carry forward obstructing matters, such as are sure sooner or later to clog any ordinary house drain. It also furnishes a sufficiently strong flow to secure a wide distribution of the liquid...