53 



been insisted upon more with a view to prevent solids 

 entering the sewers than to prevent the escape of effluvia. 

 A great number of the traps in ordinary use are of no use 

 whatever for either purpose. If the plan of outside com- 

 munication with drains were adopted there would be no 

 necessity for any trap in any house. An efficient trap often 

 itself becomes a great nuisance through the putrefaction 

 which takes place in its fluid contents : without fluid no 

 trap exists. 



It is impossible to more than touch on the evils of our 

 existing system of Towns' drainage. I know of my own 

 knowledge that there are very few houses into which sewer 

 gas does not permeate. From actual observation I know 

 that our Q,'eneral sewage system is most defective. That is, 

 if you agree with me that no sewer is rightly constructed 

 which allows its contents to stagnate or solid matters to 

 accumulate. Our house drains are many of them in a state 

 which beggars description, and through them, and through 

 our abominable middens, the soil on which we live is super- 

 saturated with foecal matter. 



If health authorities are wise they will at once take steps 

 to set their houses in order, and the only way to banish 

 Typhoid fever from the land is by radically reforming the 

 defects which I have pointed out. 



The Prince's illness has compelled attention to these 

 defects, and I am only sorry to see men of eminence in the 

 scientific world urging such paltry palliative remedies as 

 charcoal pans, instead of insisting on what will prove 

 cheapest in the end — real radical reform of commonly 

 admitted evils. 



Mr. Henkt H. Howorth remarked that he spoke with- 

 out any special knowledge of the subject, and as a mere 

 Philistine, but he thought that some elementary facts of 

 common experience were overlooked by the gentlemen who 

 were engaged in improving our drainage system. He was 



