Polytechnic Association. 651 



misuses to which they have been and still are applied, and I will 

 review briefly some of the means that have been adopted to abate or 

 to mitigate the evil consequence of these wrong uses. 



We have no reliable or authentic account of sewers being con- 

 structed before those commenced in Rome, by Tarquinius Priexus, 

 600 years before Christ. These sewers were constructed for the 

 purpose of conveying the fecal matter into the Tiber. Of these 

 sewers (or Cloaca Maxima, as they were called), Professor Liebig 

 says, " they swallowed up in a few hundred years all that could make 

 the Roman peasantry prosperous, and when the fields of the Campagna 

 were no longer able to produce the necessaries of life for the Roman 

 people, then the riches of Sicily, Sardinia and the fertile coasts of 

 Africa, irretrievably lost in these cloacae." 



There is, no doubt but one of the results has also been to assist 

 ''materially in causing" that rise in the bed of the Tiber which is 

 so well known to have taken place. The consequence of this rise 

 has been to render a great part of the country around Rome swampy, 

 and so unhealthy that it is impossible, during some seasons, for stran- 

 gers, particularly, to remain a night in the vicinity of these swamps 

 without contracting some fatal malarious disease. At a later date 

 Alexandria, Carthage, Constantinople, Marseilles, Florence, London 

 and many other cities, adopted a system of sewers similar to the 

 Cloaca Maxima of Rome. It does not appear, however, that until 

 of late years water was used in sufficient, if to any extent, as a 

 vehicle for carrying off this fecal matter. The only practical dem- 

 onstration we have of water being used effectually, in early times, for 

 carrying away manure, is that of Hercules turning the river Peneus 

 through the stables of Augias. 



The oldest sewers in Germany are, perhaps, some of those still in 

 use in Cologne, which were built in the time of the Roman occupa- 

 tion of Germany. Many sewers, or cloaca, as they were called, that 

 were built in early times in Cologne, have become completely filled 

 up with fecal and other matter, and the consequence has been that 

 these, in connection with the cess-pools of later date, have impregnated 

 the earth in that city to such a depth, that the well water (upon which 

 the city, until now, wholly depends), is of such a nauseous character 

 that it is almost unfit for drinking or culinary purposes. One 

 remarkable fact may also be mentioned, that during the prevalence 

 of the cholera in Cologne, the disease has, in all cases, manifested 

 itself to a far greater extent in the vicinity of these old sewers, and 

 in some cases has been confined entirely to their locality. 



