Recent Progress in Sanitary Science. 279 



tion is to be found in the case of laborers, whose duty it is 

 to jump into the lime-purifiers employed in the defecation of 

 illuminating gas, and to shovel out the lime charged with 

 sulphur compounds. The smell is intolerable, frequently 

 nauseating the workmen, yet not producing active disease. 

 Sewer-gas, on the contrary, is not violently offensive, and 

 may diffuse itself through apartments without detection, and, 

 as in Glasgow "and Edinburgh, in the houses of the better 

 classes, may produce outbreaks of typhoid fever. For this 

 reason, either the public sewers should be properly flushed 

 and ventilated, which, practically speaking, is very difficult 

 of accomplishment — or those who multiply bath-rooms and 

 water-closets in connection with the sleeping apartments of 

 a house (as is now done in city dwellings, where the desire 

 of luxury on the part of the occupant, and the ingenuity of 

 the mechanic in increasing the expense on the other, have 

 permeated the house with an elaborate net-,vork of hot and 

 cold-water pipes, waste-pipes, traps, sewer-connections and 

 drains) should employ the services of a sanitary engineer, 

 to see that a suitable system of flues is likewise provided to 

 carry ofl* the gases from the water-closets — the "practical 

 plumber" being generally ignorant of both the necessity and 

 the means of doing so. Either these remedies should be 

 applied, or the water-closets should be made as few as possi- 

 ble, and the traps put in connection with flues, in which an 

 upward draft is preserved both in winter and summer, by 

 stoves or lamps. 



No chemist, so far as we are aware, has attempted a com- 

 plete analysis of sewer-gases, or those other exhalations from 

 decomposing matters, which are laden with the ferments that 

 become active in zymotic diseases. Even if he did deter- 

 mine the percentage of every gas present, he would not be 

 able to estimate and isolate the septic ferments — the chief 

 culprits in the origination of disease. It would be well if 

 water-analysts would distinctly inform the public that they 

 are daily asked to do in respect to water, something quite as 



