POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



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POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



The Sanitary Problems of New York City. 



Professor W. P. Trowbridge, discussing 

 " The Sanitary Problems of New York City," 

 in the "School of Mines Quarterly," considers 

 chiefly the ventilation of houses and the con- 

 dition of the streets. The topography of the 

 city, presenting long rows of closely built 

 blocks of dwellings and stores, and of the 

 narrow streets that separate them, is a very 

 obvious sign of the close crowding of a large 

 population into a small space which actual- 

 ly exists. This crowding is of itself a great 

 sanitary evil. If, says Professor Trow- 

 bridge, we may take a lesson from nature 

 in the distribution of other classes of the 

 animal kingdom, we find that the herding 

 together in confined places of any one class 

 of animals is detrimental to the health and 

 well-being of the individuals. Diseases pe- 

 culiar to the class of animals are apt to 

 arise, and a general physical deterioration 

 takes place. " As an animal, man is not 

 exempt from this law of nature, unless, 

 through his own superior intelligence, he 

 secures to himself immunity from the evils 

 which over-crowding entails." A momen- 

 tous question in our city life is whether, in 

 the construction of our houses, and stores, 

 and hotels, and public halls, the quantity of 

 air which each person requires for his health 

 is provided for by processes or appliances 

 of ventilation. The quantity of air required 

 for a healthy life is generally estimated by 

 the number of cubic feet needed for res- 

 piration alone. This is a mistake. Each 

 person needs vastly more enough to se- 

 cure a thorough aeration of his clothing and 

 to destroy by oxidation all the hurtful ema- 

 nations of the body. In houses, moreover, 

 the needs of large quantities of pure air 

 for the aeration of clothing, basements, 

 kitchens, closets, and the closets in which 

 clothing is kept, are probably as great as 

 for respiration. Yet, "how few of the 

 houses in the long blocks which constitute 

 the city of New York have been constructed 

 with the slightest reference to the constant 

 introduction and removal of air ! " All of 

 our houses are provided with four or five 

 chimney-flues which might be made avail- 

 able for ventilation to a certain extent, but 



in the use of which it is so little thought 

 of that the rooms, that micrht be connect- 

 ed with them, are hermetically sealed from 

 them. The kitchen or basement, where 

 there is necessarily an accumulation of del- 

 eterious gases, or impoverished air, is per- 

 haps the worst ventilated room in the house. 

 The people still need to be convinced that 

 ventilation is necessary, and that force must 

 be used to move the air. The object can be 

 secured by means of vertical ventilating 

 flues of sufficient suction, but the applica- 

 tion of heat either by a gas-jet or other ar- 

 tificial means is requisite to keep them in 

 operation. The matter of the dirt in the 

 streets has an important sanitary aspect. 

 From this point of view, Professor Trow- 

 bridge thinks it is worthy of consideration 

 whether an entirely new treatment is not 

 advisable. Heretofore, attention has been 

 confined to the removal of the dirt as it 

 accumulated ; Professor Trowbridge would 

 have means adopted to prevent its accumu- 

 lating. "The dirt that covers the streets 

 as they are now paved does not come 

 entirely from above or from any exter- 

 nal source, but is forced upward from be- 

 neath the pavements by the impact of the 

 trucks, carts, carriages, and horses' hoofs, 

 in the ordinary traffic of the city. It is 

 doubtful whether it is possible to keep the 

 streets reasonably clean, even with an ex- 

 penditure of double the present outlay for 

 that purpose. The soil on which the pave- 

 ments are laid is not a soil which effects its 

 own drainage, and each successive shower 

 or storm saturates the surface beneath the 

 paving, the water carrying down the leach- 

 ings of the streets ; and this soil, permeated 

 with decomposing substances and saturated 

 with polluted water, is forced to the surface. 

 No better medium for retaining and giving 

 off malarial gases could probably be manu- 

 factured. When dried, this expelled mud 

 becomes dust, and is carried about by the 

 winds into every household. The real cure 

 of this great evil appears to me to be an 

 impervious pavement an asphaltic pave- 

 ment." No dirt could rise through this, 

 and, if every street in the city were paved 

 with it, what dirt falling upon it was not 

 carried off naturally by showers into the 

 sewers could be thoroughly removed by me- 

 chanical sweepers without dust or noise. 



