SEWER-GAS. i 9 



Joseph A. Andrews, dated at Hong-Kong, May 9, 1882, giving a de- 

 scription of Canton, " the most characteristic of Chinese towns," in 

 which it is said, " No closed under-ground sewers or drains exist, save 

 a rudely constructed gutter in the center of the street, which carries 

 off the superfluous rain," etc. The contents of latrines are removed in 

 open buckets, generally during the day. And notwithstanding these, 

 with many other unquestionably unsanitary conditions, in a city con- 

 taining a population of one million, situated in a warm climate, " there 

 is no typhus, rarely typhoid, and none of the other diseases, diphthe- 

 ria, etc., considered the inevitable consequence of defective sanita- 

 tion." 



Dr. Andrews adds : 



The healthiness of the foreign population of Canton is certainly in a great 

 measure owing to the absence of water-closets in the dwelling-houses, which at 

 home are a fruitful source of disease. Sulphureted and carbureted hydrogen 

 gases are evidently not so injurious to health when given off in the open air as 

 when escaping from sewers. Canton, like the whole country, is a city of bad 

 smells, and yet the people do not seem to suffer from them, but, on the con- 

 trary, rather like them. The removal of excreta and the disposal of sewer- 

 water is the sanitary problem of the day at home and abread. Our sewers allow 

 the transference of gases and organic molecules from house to house and from 

 place to place. Occasionally, by bursting, leakage, or absorption, the ground is 

 contaminated, and the water-supply is in danger of being contaminated and poi- 

 soned ; and all these dangers are greater from being concealed. In China, there 

 is at least freedom from one of these dangers. It would certainly seem advisable 

 that our water-closets should he in a projection from the building, with a tube 

 passing to the outer air. 



The italics are Dr. Andrews's. 



Why did those in authority allow such defective sanitary arrangements? was 

 everywhere asked after the fever at Lord Londesborough's ; and this question 

 you heard repeated, regardless of the fact that sanitary arrangements, having 

 such results in this and other cases, were themselves the outcome of appointed 

 sanitary administrations, regardless of the fact that the authorized system had 

 itself been the means of introducing foul gases into houses.* (" The Study of 

 Sociology," by Herbert Spencer, p. 3, and note on p. 405.) 



Finally, the writer wishes it to be understood that he recognizes 

 the agency of many other conditions than the presence of sewer-gas 

 in dwelling-houses in causing the increased death-rate of large cities ; 

 but that, in what he has written, his chief purpose has been to place 

 before his readers the careful observations of scientific and practical 



* Of various testimonies to this, one of the most striking was that given by Mr. 

 Charles Mayo, M. B., of New College, Oxford, who, having had to examine the drainage 

 of Windsor, found that " in a previous visitation of typhoid fever the poorest and lowest 

 part of the town had entirely escaped, while the epidemic had been very fatal in good 

 houses. The difference was this, that while the better houses were all connected with the 

 sewers, the poor part of the town had no drains, but made use of cesspools in the gardens. 

 And this is by no means an isolated instance." 



