VARIOUS HYGIENIC ASPECTS OF AUSTRALIAN LIFE. 501 



municipalities can hardly be blamed in this stage of our knowledge 

 for so conveying their waste matter; but where rivers and shallow 

 bays adjoin a town there can beno justihcation for polluting them 

 with sewage. h\ many Australian towns there is at times a 

 scanty water supply, and where such contingency may happen it 

 will be inadvisal)le to construct water-closets. The removal of 

 excreta by a dry method, as far as I know, has never been carried 

 out in any town in these colonies according to sanitary principle. 

 Much has been left to municipal authorities acting in a careless 

 manner, and f reijuently no dry earth or absorbent powder is used. 

 This is the case in^Ielbourne, a little red carbolic dust being cast into 

 the pan and so the odour is slightly disguised. A common English 

 usage new arrivals adopt in building their houses, is to dig a pit 

 and set a closet over it. The first rain that falls tills the pit with 

 water, and the resulting fermenting solution becomes a breeding 

 place for tlies and mosquitos. The smell of such closets can be 

 noticed for twenty yards or more, and all neighbouriug lead paint 

 is more or less blackened. There is great scope for improvement 

 in sanitary usages with regard to these matters ; the most funda- 

 mental necessity being to construct the closet a little above the 

 level of the ground on a concrete floor with walls of iron, such 

 closets can be cleansed and disinfected so as to completely remove 

 all chance of disease spreading from that source. A system of 

 removal of town refuse and excreta by railway, as is done in 

 Dunedin, merits attention, a large area of land being set apart 

 for the reception of it. In Australia land can be had cheap a few 

 miles out of any town, railway trucks can be made to receive the 

 bodies of the collecting carts, which when once closed need not be 

 opened till arriving at the farm, and before returning all materials 

 should be cleansed with boiling water, which can be then used for 

 irrigation, whilst return trains can be laden with virgin soil, dried 

 and ground to sujoply the earth closets ; a scheme of this kind 

 would do much to eradicate typhoid. Much has been said of 

 typhoid fever being disseminated by the use of contaminated 

 water and milk, but there also appears a cause of the spi"ead 

 of this disease to which little attention has been paid. I allude 

 to the walls and furniture of the rooms in which typhoid 

 patients have slept. After the treatment of a fever case I have 

 been in the habit of recommending the painting or varnishing 

 of the walls and floor on which the contagious particles mixed with 

 dust have fallen, to lock in the element of the disease. Dr. McCrea, 

 for many years Health Ofticer of Melbourne, has for a long time 

 been giving the same advice ; he also scorches the walls by setting 

 fire to kerosene painted on in small patches at a time. Dusting 

 and sweeping rooms in which contagious fevei's are treated, should 

 be conducted with judgment. After an experience here of over 

 twenty years, my views are that typhoid is carried into bush set- 

 tlements, and when a number of people have sufl'ered from it, 



