AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 229 



of the causes of insalubrity and of preventible disease, at tlie 

 same time that tliey prove defective local administration. And col- 

 laterally, that, in rural districts all continuous smells from vege- 

 table decomposition indicate preventible loss of fertilizing matter, 

 loss of money and bad husbandry. 



Of the first of these two conclusions any one may convince 

 himself who will take the trouble to visit those portions of New- 

 York city affiicted with small pox, typhus and scarlet fever, and 

 any other endemic disease of a contagious nature; that his own 

 sensations will immediately indicate the seats of insalubrity; he 

 will feel a sickening, deadening depressing sensation caused by 

 breathing the air mixed wdth organic vapors arising from decay, 

 as wtII as offensive and pungent odors ; and though those odors 

 invariably indicate danger, it does not by any means follow that 

 danger does not exist when there are no such warnings ; as tlie 

 danger is frequently greater when no w\arnings exist, from foul 

 air, which does not affect the olfactory organs so strongly. 



In the absence of hydraulic or steam works, for the drainage 

 of our down town city houses, various palliatives of the evils 

 connected wdth the retention of refuse beneath or near dwellings, 

 have been tried, but invariably proved unsatisfactory. 



The discharge of vegetable or animal excretia from houses 

 through drains into sewers, as practised in the upper parts of the 

 city, is most certainly wrong, from the tact that they are imme- 

 diately carried into the North or East rivers, converting those 

 splendid streams into common receiving sewers. This is not all; 

 the outlets of the sewers into the river are, or soon will be, so 

 low that their contents will be delivered at, or perhaps a little 

 above, low w^ater level. These decomposing, filthy matters ere 

 consequently delivered near the banks of the rivers, and left there 

 to stagnate and poison the atmosphere, and to be brought up by 

 every tide for the thorough pollution of the waters. In too many 

 of these sewers the tide ebbs and ilows, the immediate consequence 

 of which naturally is, that the proper discharge of the sewerage 

 is suspended, and the gases engendered by the decomi)osi]ig mass 

 within the sewers are driven back towards the point from which 

 they issued; this renders it necessary to cleanse them by hand, as 

 we have often observed foul sewerage matters being raised to the 



