AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 223 



quarters likewise live and sleep in confined habitations, constantly polluted 

 by the emanations from large quantities of cess pool water retained beneath 

 them. This is removed in closed receptacles, but the decomposition of 

 matter contained in them goes on, and the noxious gases escape, causing 

 inconvenience and annoyance to all those living on the thoroughfares 

 through which they pass. Numerous palliations for the evils arising from 

 retention of manures near dwellings, have been often tried ; chemical agents 

 have been used to deodorize aud disinfect them, to fix the ammonia and 

 arrest decomposition. The value of these disinfectants have been exam- 

 ined, and their complete sanitary efiicacy proved doubtful, their addition 

 to the manure useless if not detrimental, and where muck as absorbents 

 have been used, the bulk was so augmented, that the expense of removal 

 became great. In some instances air shafts from cess pools have been used 

 as expedients to carry off the product of decomposition, but they only in- 

 crease the amount of evaporation, and although they diminish the intensity 

 of the effiuvia on the spot, they spread among the inhabitants of the neigh- 

 borhood the gaseous impurity moi"e widely, and waste the valuable prop- 

 erties of the manure, the pecuniary loss of which is trivial, compared to 

 the mortality occasioned by the retention of filth in the cess pools. 



While none of these expedients have been successful in the removal of 

 the sanitary evils, they would have cost as much had they been practica- 

 ble on a large scale, as would a complete system of house and city drain- 

 age. The investigations so far made as to the means of improving the 

 sanitary condition of our population, created by the inconvenience and ex- 

 pense of cleansing by hand labor, have firmly established the conclusion, 

 that the refuse is received best, most easily preserved, least offensively 

 and most thoroughly and economically removed by water, in impermeable 

 pipes, leading into covered receptacles. The principle of the removal of 

 the refuse in suspension in water may be applied universally at a far lower 

 rate than the expense of cleaning cess pools ; that until the principle is 

 applied, until the obstacles created by the expense of hand labor and cart- 

 age in the removal of excrementitious matters are overcome, until cess 

 pools are abolished, and all substances, liable to run into putrefactive fer- 

 mentation, is immediately removed from among habitations, until the sur- 

 face cleansing of alleys, streets, and particularly markets, in thickly inhab- 

 ited communities is effected more quickly, a positive improvement in the 

 public health of the districts occupied by the majority of the population, 

 cannot possibly be expected. The average quantity of cess pool manure 

 is at least two loads per annum for each house. 



But if cess pools be superseded, and the water closet principle generally 

 introduced, as it has been in a large number of houses in the city, then as 

 the old practice of engineering converts the East and North rivers into 

 great sewers, they will become far more polluted than they at present are. 



At this stage of investigation, which brings us to the dilemma of either 

 polluting our noble rivers, by the discharge of the refuse of the city into 

 them, or of polluting the atmosphere by the retention and accumulation of 



