198 Sewage and Sewerage. [ April, 
filth may, under certain conditions, actually generate fever, without 
the entrance of any such fresh agent as a “specific cause” from 
without ; but between being “highly probable,” and “as certain 
as that two and two make four,” there is a good deal of difference. 
The fact is, that the question of the spontaneous generation of fevers 
is, like the yet larger question of the spontaneous generation of 
organic living forms, still a moot point, though it cannot be said im 
this, as in the larger question, that the “Panspermist” has the 
weight of authority on his side. In a thickly-populated country 
like ours, it must always be possible for the seeds of any disease to 
be carried any whither; and a “ Panspermist ” ought not to be less 
vigilant in rooting up what, on his view, would be the necessary 
nidus for his germs, than the man who believes, as we incline to 
believe, that the “nidus” itself can produce the eggs. The ques- 
tion, therefore, is not necessarily a practical one; there are diseases 
enough which have their parentage referred, by all but bad land- 
lords, to bad drainage, and with Dr. Parkes’s well-balanced statement 
of the case we close it. At p. 28 he says, “To sum up: the dis- 
eases produced by foecal emanations on the general population seem 
to be diarrhoea; bilious disorders, often with febrile symptoms ; 
dyspepsia; general malaise and anemia—all these being affections 
of digestion or sanguification ; typhoid fever also is intimately con- 
nected with sewage emanations, either being their direct result, or, 
more probably, being caused by specifie products being mined with 
the sewage. In addition, sewer-air aggravates most decidedly the 
severity of all the exanthemata, erysipelas, hospital gangrene, and 
puerperal fever, and probably has an injurious effect on all other 
cases.” On the other hand, recent inquiries have shown that certain 
so-called “facts” alleged by the anti-sanitarians are, in reality, no 
facts at all. It has been said by these lovers of darkness, that work- 
men in sewers are not more subject to fevers than other labourers ; 
but on close analysis it has been shown—first, that these men 
really are less healthy than their brother operatives; and, secondly, 
that no account had been taken in the examination and enumeration 
of healthy sewer-men of the protecting influence which previous 
unrecorded or unrecognized attacks of fever had conferred upon 
them ; and, lastly, that no set-off had been allowed for the working 
of natural selection, in weeding-out, at their very first entrance 
upon the employment, of such would-be sewer-men as had no innate 
aptitude for the function. 
There is a fault of minor importance, in a scientific point of 
view, but still of much practical moment, into which several sanita- 
rians have fallen, and which all would do well henceforward to 
avoid. This fault is a fault of style, and consists in the introduction 
of rhetorical language, of far-fetched metaphors, and even of sacred 
names into the somewhat earthy matters of which we have been 
