256 



SOME ASPECTS OF TROPICAL SANITATION 



A quotation 

 from 

 Victor Hugo 



I went, hunted up the Financial Secretary, paintofl the situation in lurid colours, and 

 obtained financial approval. The evil was averted, but the Inspector had to labour 

 like Hercules to get things set agoing in time. 



Such a system prevents the soil in the neighbourliood of houses becoming fouled, 

 and, properly conducted, is very efficient. It has, in my opinion, led to a notable 

 reduction of dysentery in Khartoum, while in a population of about sixty thousand we have 

 only some fifteen cases of locally-acquired enteric fever a year. It is somewhat expensive 

 to work, and its success depends almost \^iiolly on efficient inspection. We have a saying 

 in Khartoum tlnit when things are going very smoothly it is well to be suspicious. Rapid 

 work usually means faulty work, for the cleaner is up to every kind of trick, and loves 

 to lighten his load. He has to be taken miawares and promptly punished, but he nmst be 

 justly punished, for the least injustice rankles, and may speedily bring about a rebellion. 

 I cannot describe all the aspects of this work, but let us look for a moment at the method of 

 disposal of the excreta. 



Those of you who have read that masterly study of social life, Les Miscrahhf, may 

 remember the fine passage in which Victor Hugo deals with the sewage question : — • 



"Paris," he says, "casts twenty-five millions of francs annually into the sea, and 

 we assert this without any metaphor. How so and in what way ' By day and night. For 

 what object? For no object. With what thought? Without thinking. With what 

 object? None. By means of what organs? Its intestines. What are its intestines? 

 Its sewers ; 25 millions is the most moderate of the approximate amounts given by the 

 estimates of modern science. Science, after groping for a long time, knows now that the 

 most fertilising and effective of manures is human manure. The Chinese, let us say it 

 to our shame, knew this before we did ; not a Chinese peasant, it is Eckebei-g who states 

 the fact, who goes to the city but brings at either end of his bamboo a bucketful of 

 what we call filth. Thanks to this human manure, the soil in China is still as youthful 

 as in the days of Abraham, and Chinese wheat yields just one hundred and twenty-fold 

 the sowing. There is no guano comparable in fertility to the detritus of a capital and 

 a large city is the strongest of stercoraries. To employ the town in manuring the plain 

 would be certain success, for if gold be dung, on the other hand our dung is gold. What 

 is done with this golden dung ? It is swept into tlu> f^nlf. We send at great expense 

 fleets of ships to collect at the Southern Pole the guano of petrels and penguins, and cast 

 into the sea the incalculable element of wealth which we have under our hand. All the 

 human and animal manure which the world loses, if returned to land instead of being 

 thrown into the sea would suffice to nourish the world. Do you know what these piles 

 of ordure are, collected at the corner of the streets, those carts of mud carried off at 

 night from the streets, the frightful barrels of the night man, and the foetid streams of 

 subterranean mud which the pavements conceal from you ? All this is a flowering field, 

 it is green grass, it is mint and thyme and sage, it is game, it is cattle, it is the satisfied 

 lowing of heavj' kine at night, it is perfumed hay, it is gilded wheat, it is bread on 

 your table, it is warm blood in your veins, it is health, it is joy, it is life ! So desires 

 that mysterious creation which is transformation in earth and transfiguration in heaven 

 — restore this to the great crucible and your abundance will issue from it, for the nutrition 

 of the plains produces the nourishment of man. You are at liberty to lose the wealth 

 and consider me ridiculous into the bargain — it would be the masterpiece of your ignorance. 

 Statistics have calculated that France alone pours every year into the Atlantic a sum of 

 half a million. Note this, with these 500 millions, a quarter of the expenses of the Budget 

 would be paid." 



