1884.] CIVILIZATION AND ITS WASTES. 267 



recent sample, copied in our Medical News from the London 

 Lancet. Titled English parties have patented a plan for tapping 

 adjacent gas-pipes and establishing fires with intensely heated 

 plates beneath the gratings of every street sewer vent. In this 

 way it is calculated that heat and suction will keep the sewers 

 ventilated and singe all the '• animalculse and fungoid life " in the 

 sewer gases. With influence enough to get money enough, no 

 doubt this invention may be made to " work " until the great day 

 of "confusion of tongues." Warming sewage will not help 

 people much on the streams below, but a city street lined with 

 subterranean lights would be showy in the night, anyhow, and 

 intestinal views would be open for the curious at all hours. 

 Possibly sewer gratings, constantly heated, might be rented — seeing 

 the sewer-gases are made innocuous — for some heating, baking, 

 broiling, or pot-boiling purposes. Surely there would be a remedy 

 for cold feet and a free fireside for the poor and destitute classes. 

 Gas companies would favor the idea, and a long line of trade and 

 "street" interests would be touched by it at once. Electric 

 extinguishment and lighting might easily be arranged for incendi- 

 ary periods. Perhaps northern cities could use the surplus heat to 

 keep side-walks free of ice; indeed, as we think the matter over, 

 long, branching vistas of possible utility open before us in the 

 line of false sanitary gods. 



The city mind has become so different of late from the country 

 mind, Mr. Chairman, in regard to what is good, that I don't like 

 to make fun of any sanitary idea gentlemen may please to offer. 

 The scheme just now alluded to for singeing distempers out of 

 sewers may yet find favor with our great sanitary lights — who 

 knows? I am very sensitive to city influence myself, and before 

 seeing this foreign idea had already spent some time in conjuring 

 a plan to establish a draft of fire and smoke in our own sink-drain 

 at home. May be we've got to burn these things out, abolish 

 them, or be abolished ourselves. But if it should appear that city 

 sewers need singeing in the care of public health, it will certainly 

 appear that the streams receiving the sewerage will need singeing 

 too. I have read, lately, that one of our principal cities has been 

 making accidental experiments in this direction, and has actually 

 had its river on fire with flaming coal-tar, in a most extraordinary 

 manner. Whether any sanitary patents are growing out of this 

 idea I have not yet learned . 

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