ON THE SOCIAL BENEFITS OF PARAFFIN. 69 



and ill-ventilated cottages. Rooms were commonly filled 

 with lodgers who economized the apartments on the Box and 

 Cox principle, the night workers sleeping during the day, 

 and the day workers during the night, in the same heds. 

 The extent to which this overcrowding was carried in many 

 instances is hardly credible. 



Mr. R. Platt, who is surgeon to most of the collieries 

 and oilworks of this, district, reports that Leeswood has 

 enjoyed a singular immunity from typhus and fever that, 

 during a period when it was prevalent as a serious epidemic 

 among the agricultural population living on the slopes of 

 the surrounding mountains, no single case occurred among 

 the oil-making population of Leeswood, though its position 

 and overcrowding seemed so directly to court its visitation. 

 If space permitted I might give further illustrations in ref- 

 erence to allied diseases. 



There is no difficulty in accounting for this. Carholic 

 acid, one of the most powerful of our disinfectants, is 

 abundantly produced in the oilworks, and this is carried by 

 the clothes of the men, and with the fumes of the oil, into 

 the dwellings of the workmen and through all the atmos- 

 phere of the neighborhood, and has thereby counteracted 

 some of the most deadly agencies of organic poisons. Be- 

 sides this, the paraffin oil itself is a good disinfectant. 



Even the mischief done to the trout is more than coun- 

 terbalanced by the destruction of those mysterious fungoid 

 growths which result from the admixture of sewage matter 

 with the water of our rivers, and are so destructive to hu- 

 man health and life. The carbolic acid and paraffin oil, in 

 destroying these as well as the trout, are really acting as 

 great purifiers of the river, so that, after all, the only in- 

 terest that has suffered is the sporting interest. This same 

 interest has otherwise suffered. The old haunts of the 

 snipe and woodcock, of partridges, hares, and pheasants, 

 are being ruthlessly and barbarously destroyed, and horri- 

 ble to relate hundreds of cottages, inhabited by vulgar, 

 hard-handed, thick-booted human beings, are taking their 

 place. Churches are being extended, school-houses and 

 chapels built ; penny readings, lectures, concerts, etc., are 

 in active operation, and even drinking fountains are in 



