348 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS. 



Generated in large volumes in the canal, and lower end of as well as in the sewers, 

 it ascends the sewers to escape at every higher level, and creates the pestilential 

 influences heretofore referred to. We had some experience in this city in 1857, 

 causing death and prolonged disease among the inmates of one of our hotels. 

 Thus the deleterious gases ascend and the poisonous liquids descend, making the 

 ventilation of the sewers as important as conveying away the solids and liquids 

 to insure the health of the city. No system of cleansing sewers by manual labor 

 is justifiable. 



Laborers employed in this disgusting business in the culverts for fluid excre- 

 ments, as in the Paris system, are subject to two terrible diseases, both due to 

 the deadly effluvium of faeces, the one caused by ammonia gas, creating distem- 

 pers of the nose and eyes, and the second by sulphuretted hydrogen, nitrogen, 

 and hydrosulphuretted ammonia, causing sudden death. In the sewers for fluid 

 and solid excrementa, as in London and Washington city, the effects are even 

 more fatal. In the report of the engineer relating to the London sewers, it ia 

 stated that he witnessed several cases of death, and others in which men were 

 taken out insensible, after only a few seconds' exposure. In Warwick street, 

 Fimlico, five men were killed, in 1852, by this gaseous sewage. Three of them 

 had gone into the sewer early in the morning, and, not returning for breakfast, 

 alarm was felt for their safety. A surgeon entered the sewer and was killed on 

 the spot. A young policeman followed and was struck dead in a few minutes. 

 On examination after death it was shown that he could not have made more than 

 two respirations before death after entering the sewer. On making an opening 

 from the street into the sewers to get the bodies of these men, the gases as they 

 escaped were set fire to by a match and burnt with a yellow flame, rising twenty 

 feet. Within three months of the date of the engineer's report three more lives- 

 were lost near Whitechapel by breathing sewage gases as it escaped from an 

 opening made into another sewer. 



It is now a well-established fact, deduced from the medical statistics of the 

 English armies in India, and of our army in its marches during the past two* 

 years, that cholera is propagated mainly by atmospheres contaminated and poi- 

 soned by the excrement of cholera patients. 



In this city the canal would be the reservoir for such matter, first to bo con- 

 taminated by travellers from infected districts, sojourning temporarily at the hotels, 

 all the sewers from which now or are hereafter to empty in the canal. 



The committee is of the opinion that the canal, as it now exists, is a great cause 

 for creating and propagating disease, and should at the earliest possible moment 

 be filled up and discontinued for use as a sewer and reservoir for excrement and 

 waste waters of kitchens, water-closets, laundries, and other sources of contam- 

 inating matter, and is also of the opinion that, if the proposition of granting the 

 city rights to this canal be confirmed, the evils herein set forth cannot, be effi- 

 ciently corrected by any means left in the power of the public authorities with- 

 out incurring a heavy expenditure to purchase rights and property now proposed 

 to be given away. 



It is proper to state that part of this system of sewage, and, it is believed, the 

 commencement of making the canal a reservoir and cesspool, was made under 

 appropriations of Congress for building sewers from the Capitol and the execu- 

 tive buildings from Fifteenth to Seventeenth streets. 



REMEDIES FOR THE EXISTING EVILS. 



The committee has pointed out the probable evil consequences of our existing- 

 system of sewage, as a result of using the canal as a cesspool and reservoir for 

 the fecal matter, from whence it cannot be removed by any existing means. It 

 has also shown that the air and water from the canal are contaminated by the 

 sewerage of the city, and produce fatal diseases tending to virulent epidemics, 

 and that the canal is neither fit for navigation, sewerage, or drainage, in its pre- 

 sent form and dimensions. 



