24 Kansas Academy of Science. 



Two thousand years later Emporia built a waterworks 

 wherein the purification process is sedimentation and a treat- 

 ment with alum, instead of sedimentation and a treatment 

 with salt as was the method of the Romans; the only ap- 

 parent progress in the method of treatment in 2000 years in 

 this case being a substitution of alum for salt. 



If the Romans had to vote bonds to build their waterworks, 

 there is no record of the usual fight against the proposition. 

 Neither are we told who was the Doctor Crumbine of that day 

 who insisted that such a system be installed. 



Paris and Lyons in France, Metz in Germany, and Segova 

 and Seville in Spain were well supplied with water at about 

 the time the Roman aqueducts were built. 



Wells -were constructed by the Chinese at a very early date. 

 These wells were often very deep and some were sunk through 

 solid rock. 



Among the ruins of nearly all large cities of ancient civiliza- 

 tion are found remains of both tile and masonry sewers. The 

 oldest sewers of which I have found any record were built by 

 the Assyrians about 900 B. c. These sewers were constructed 

 of stone masonry with flat bottoms and arched roofs. One 

 of the earliest applications of the principle of the arch to 

 structural purposes is found in these Assyrian- sewers. 



Some of the great sewers of ancient Rome were built 700 

 years B. c. and are in such a good state of preservation that 

 they are still in use after a lapse of 2600 years. 



It is evident that the ancient Greek, Roman and Assyrian 

 engineers were not only proficient in accuracy, with ability 

 to plan enduring construction work, but they had developed 

 engineering science to a point where considerable efficiency 

 in the matter of sanitation was reached. Roman engineers 

 especially had at this early date developed some excellent and 

 systematic sanitary engineering methods. 



For a thousand years following the fall of the Roman Em- 

 pire, 476 A. D., sanitary engineering, with other branches of 

 science, suffered great degeneracy. As a result of neglecting 

 sanitary precautions through the Dark Ages following, impure 

 water supplies contaminated by accumulations of filth pre- 

 dominated, resulting in the prevalence of disease and pesti- 

 lence throughout the period. The neglect of their great sys- 

 tem of drains was so complete during this period that some of 



