SANITARY SCIENCE. 



717 



the trade is shown by the difficulty that boards 

 of health meet with in having their require- 

 ments carried out, and undoubtedly if the ex- 

 aminations of plumbers that apply for regis- 

 tration were rigid, a very large proportion of 

 the plumbing craft would either give up busi- 

 ness or go to school and learn their trade 

 properly. Nevertheless, the apprenticeship 

 problem still remains unsolved. Employers 

 are loath to bind boys as apprentices, because 

 they do not want the trouble of teaching them, 

 and because there is no security that they will 

 stay with them long enough to repay the 

 labor. Again, formal instruction is needed in 

 those principles of chemistry and physics that 

 underlie sanitary drainage, and this can not 

 be acquired in a shop. There is no time for 

 such instruction during active work, and there 

 is no one who is qualified, or whose business it 

 is, to give such training. Technical schools 

 must therefore be relied upon. In several in- 

 stitutions, courses of instruction in sanitary 

 plumbing are now supplied, notably at the 

 New York Trade Schools in Sixty-first Street 

 and First Avenue, founded by R. T. Auchmuty, 

 and in similar institutions in Philadelphia and 

 Chicago. There is also an advanced course in 

 sanitary engineering at the Columbia College 

 School of Mines ; but this is intended for pro- 

 fessional engineers. As in most other trades, 

 the plumber needs thorough training in the 

 principles of his calling, and to have his stand- 

 ard of capacity raised and his position digni- 

 fied. Despite the substitution of machine for 

 hand labor, the plumbers' work must always 

 remain a handicraft and can never sink to a 

 mere mechanism. Individual skill and judg- 

 ment are constantly demanded, and, while the 

 mass of the trade exhibit a low order of intelli- 

 gence, the skilled plumbers have no superiors 

 among artisans for intelligence, excepting pos- 

 sibly among machinists. 



Rceent Progress in Plumbing. In none of the 

 applied arts have greater or more rapid changes 

 taken place than in house-plumbing. 



Up to quite recent years, very few towns 

 were sewered, and household drainage arrange- 

 ments were of the most primitive kind. Eras- 

 mus's description of English domestic life in 

 the sixteenth century shows an utter neglect of 

 sanitary considerations, while the ravages of 

 the black-death and other epidemics were un- 

 doubtedly due to the universal disregard of 

 sanitary laws. The old tradition, that every 

 cess-pool had a familiar spirit that destroyed 

 people living near by, showed the existence 

 and the potency for evil of what is now called 

 sewer-gas ; but it was not until the nature and 

 composition of the gases produced from decom- 

 posing filth were understood that it was pos- 

 sible to provide safeguards against them. Even 

 then, with the means of prevention at hand, 

 it was years before measures of relief were 

 formulated ; pestilence was considered provi- 

 dential, and was met with prayer. Lord Palm- 

 erston's blunt refusal to appoint a fast-day 



when England was threatened with the chol- 

 era, and advising sanitary precautions instead, 

 seemed almost sacrilegious to many people. 

 The condition of the prisons, hospitals, and lu- 

 natic asylums, as revealed by John Howard 

 and Elizabeth Fry, showed the dense ignorance 

 and apathy of the public regarding prevent- 

 ive medicine. The first practical sanitarians, 

 in the modern sense, were medical men or 

 civil engineers, like Mr. Chadwick, Dr. Rich- 

 ardson, and Sir Robert Rawlinson, in Eng- 

 land, whose chief thought was how to provide 

 drainage and a pure water-supply for cities 

 and towns, and to improve the public health 

 in general. The Crimean War gave great im- 

 petus to their labors, which were still more 

 aided by the death of Prince Albert and the 

 serious illness of the Prince of Wales, both on 

 account of exposure to foul cess-pool emana- 

 tions. These two startling occurrences raised 

 public attention to the consideration of house- 

 hold sanitation, and the cry "Look to your 

 drains ! " became proverbial. 



The gist of modern plumbing practice in 

 the United States dates back scarcely more than 

 twenty years. Machine-made lead pipes and 

 traps became common about 1840; cast-iron 

 drain-pipe came into general use a few years 

 later. Soil-pipes had been ventilated previous 

 to 1875, but the practice did not become gen- 

 eral until about 1880. Separate trapping of 

 each fixture independently followed. The 

 publication of the ' " Plumbing Code of the 

 New York Board of Health," which was com- 

 piled in consultation with some of the most 

 experienced engineers and plumbers through- 

 out the country, had the effect of crystallizing 

 opinion as to the essentials of good plumbing ; 

 and while some minor modifications have been 

 made in these rules, they may be taken to-day 

 as the standard of good practice, and their in- 

 fluence has been wide spread. 



As a matter of history, and to show the 

 progress that has been made in the past few 

 years, the accompanying plan of house-drain- 

 age, issued by the New York Board of Health 

 in 1878, is interesting. The defects in this 

 plan are readily seen. The main drain is car- 

 ried underground, instead of being exposed to 

 view along the cellar-wall. It has little if any 

 pitch, and would be liable to choke up with 

 grease. There is a trap to disconnect it from 

 the sewer, but no air-inlet to prevent confined 

 air and assist ventilation. Furthermore, sev- 

 eral of the fixtures are placed too far from the 

 waste-pipe (notably the wash-trays), whose 

 running-trap would certainly siphon, while its 

 contents would force foul air up into the bowl 

 of the servants' water-closet. The horizontal 

 waste-pipes have no fall. The two basins have 

 no traps, but depend on the bath-trap, which 

 would not resist siphonage, while the discharge 

 of any of the fixtures on the upper floor would 

 siphon the traps of the second story water- 

 closet. Yet this plan was officially promul- 

 gated only seven years ago as exhibiting "all 



