Oct. 12, 1882] 



NATURE 



577 



to Dr. Quain, the epiphyses of the long bones of the 

 extremity in man are not perfect as regards their ossifica- 

 tion until the age of from 23 to 25 years. At that age 

 natural growth is finally completed, and Fleurens, multi- 

 plying this age by 5, brought man's normal age to some 125 

 years. Dr. Farr has been less hopeful, and has regarded 

 the natural term of human life as atabout 100 years, where- 

 as he has shown that the actual mean age at death under 

 existing circumstances is slightly under 41 years. Man, 

 according to Dr. Embleton, is himself greatly to blame 

 for his short existence, and he urged his hearers not to 

 go away contented, merely because health officers were 

 now devoting all their time to the removal of conditions 

 inimical to life, but rather themselves to attend to the 

 sanitation of their bodies, their houses, and their sur- 

 roundings. — Mr. Henry Armstrong, Medical Officer of 

 Health for the City, gave a somewhat detailed history of 

 Newcastle, from a health point of view. Having regard 

 to the many difficult sanitary problems to be dealt with, 

 he urged that it was necessary to remember the extreme 

 antiquity of the borough, and in estimating what had 

 been done, to compare the present with the more remote 

 pAst. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, epi- 

 demics, which lasted from one to three years, occurred 

 in the borough. In the time of James I. so little regard 

 was had to cleanliness, that the " dunghill " within the 

 castle precincts " had increased to such a size and bigness, 

 that it was in length 9S yards, the depth of it was 10 

 yards, and the breadth of it 32 yards," some 27,000 tons 

 of filth having thus been allowed to accumulate, In the 

 seventeenth century the Great Plague was one of eleven 

 epidemics ; it alone caused 7000 deaths, and it led, by 

 the almost complete desertion of the town and port, to a 

 ruined trade and wasted treasury. Even in 1853, at the 

 date of the then prevailing cholera epidemic, it is re- 

 ported that the town so abounded in narrow yards, lanes, 

 and " entries," that in one district alone there were streets 

 exceeding a mile in length, which had an average width 

 of some four feet only. Since then, rapid progress has 

 been made ; good water, improved sewerage, and better 

 dwellings have been provided, and although much remains 

 to be done in an ancient city which is in certain parts so 

 crowded as to prevent that proper movement of air about 

 dwellings which is necessary to health, yet the reduction 

 of the yearly death-rate per 1000 by ten in as many 

 years, and the diminution in the same time of typhus to 

 one-fifth of its prevalence in the period immediately before, 

 are matters of congratulation, and tangible results of good 

 work effected. — Prof. Henry Robinson, in dealing with 

 the question of house sanitation, pointed out that not one 

 quarter of the dwellings of all classes — high or low, rich 

 or poor — are free from dangers to health, due to defects 

 with respect of drainage, water, or ventilation, and he 

 gave a summary of the rules which should everywhere be 

 laid down to secure entire disconnection between the in- 

 terior of houses and the public sewers, basing his remarks 

 in this connection on the model series of bye-laws issued 

 by the Local Government Board. Mr. Robinson's esti- 

 mate of the proportion of unhealthy houses is, we fear, 

 below the mark, and in towns it is probable that the 

 houses of the well-to do exhibit greater sources of danger 

 than those of the poor, and this by reason of the number 

 of pipes passing from cisterns, baths, sinks, lavatories, 

 &c, directly into the drains. By means of these direct 

 connections sewer air can. notwithstanding water-traps, 

 easily make its way into dwellings, and the more 

 numerous they are, the greater the danger. Dealing with 

 the question of sewer-ventilation, Prof. Robinson urged 

 the necessity for frequent ventilating-apertures in the 

 course of the public sewers, and in considering the best 

 method of effecting this, he objected to the construction 

 of ventilating shafts in connection with dwellings, deem- 

 ing it desirable that the ventilation of the main sewer 

 should be accomplished independently of the ventilation 



of house drains. On the question of water-supply, Prof. 

 Robinson pointed out, as we had already done in com- 

 menting on Capt. Galton's address, that chemical analysis 

 could not be regarded as alone sufficing for the deter- 

 mination of the wholesomeness or otherwise of a 

 water-service, especially in the case of rivers liable to 

 contamination by animal organic matter, and he laid it 

 down as a rule that the only way to insure perfect safety- 

 was to exclude all waters which were not altogether free 

 from the possibility of pollution. The view held by Mr. 

 W. G. Laws on sewer ventilation differed entirely from 

 those of Prof. Robinson. He advocated the extension 

 upwards of the soil-pipe of houses in such a way as to 

 convey a current of sewer air through the house drain to 

 a point above the roof, and hence be objected to the 

 existence of a trap in the course of the house drain to the 

 sewer. There is one fatal objection to this system, and 

 that is, that if the slightest failure occurs in the plumber's 

 or mason's work, the foul air from the sewer makes its 

 way into the houses, a result which has often ensued, and 

 this with fatal consequences. By the adoption of the 

 principles laid down in the Model Byelaws, and which 

 received Prof. Robinson's commendation, a current of 

 fresh air instead of foul air would constantly pass through 

 the house drains, and this is the result which architects 

 should aim at securing. How far the "gas chimney" 

 advocated by Mr. Laws would answer, it is difficult to 

 say, but we would point out that as yet the Legislature 

 has given no powers to enable authorities to make use of 

 dwellings for the purposes of the ventilation of public 

 sewers. — Mr. E. C. Robins, F.S.A., drew the attention of 

 the Congress to the admirable work on the exclusion of 

 sewer air from houses, which has recently been published 

 by Dr. Renk, of Munich, and which deals with this im- 

 portant question in much detail, and in a thoroughly 

 scientific spirit. One very important question is raised 

 by Dr. Renk, namely, whether the mere inhalation of air 

 from sewers is ever provocative of specific forms of 

 disease. He is inclined to the opinion that the particular 

 matter of infection cannot pass into the human system by 

 means of the superincumbent air alone. Doubts as to 

 this have been raised before, but the emanations from 

 sewers are largely composed of aqueous vapour, which 

 must be regarded as capable of holding infective matter 

 in suspension, and Dr. Frankland, in his paper before 

 the Royal Society, has shown that in the process of the 

 breaking of minute bubbles on the surface of flowing 

 sewage, liquid particles capable of conveying infective 

 solid particles are largely transported into the surrounding 

 air. — Mr. James Leman contributed a useful paper sum- 

 marising the conditions under which it is desirable as far 

 as possible to separate rainfall from sewage with a view 

 to securing an efficient method of sewage disposal. The 

 adoption of the so-called " separate system " has unques- 

 tionable advantages as regards towns which are so cir- 

 cumstanced that it becomes imperative to reduce, as far 

 as possible, the amount of liquid to be dealt with at the 

 outfall, but it can never be absolutely carried out, for it is 

 nearly everywhere necessary to admit into the sewers 

 such rain-water as that which falls on the surface of roads 

 and which is liable to be contaminated, and also to make 

 provision for the occasional flushing of sewers during 

 storms. — Dr. Bartlett, F.C.S., communicated an inter- 

 esting paper on the influence of suspended matter on 

 health. He detailed at some length a series of failures to 

 procure specimens on the one hand, of the infectious 

 matter of the various contagia, and, on the other, of 

 the particles which swarm in the air emanating from sewers 

 and other sources, and which give rise to unwholesome 

 conditions of air. He next described how resort was had 

 to the peculiar and beautiful waste product of the smelting 

 furnace, slag-wool, as a medium through which to filter 

 air, and how by its means floating particles composed of 

 living organic matter, consisting in part of cells or cor- 



