542 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



tality; only those can be relied upon which originate from hospital records; the 

 information furnished by private practitioners is neither precise nor complete. 



Dr. Rochard, a most eminent navy surgeon, positively dissects the sanitary 

 condition of Paris. His demonstrations, mathematically correct, are not at all 

 encouraging even to the robust. Uncleanliness and overcrowding are fori Dr. 

 Rochard the causes of typhoid fever The barracks illustrate at once the bane 

 and the antidote : The buildings and out offices are offensive in point of hygiene; 

 there is an absence of ventilation ; the men live packed together. An outbreak 

 of fever follows, as a matter of course. The men are ordered to live under tents. 

 A fortnight elapses, during which the barracks are flushed, aerated, purified ; the 

 men return, but in fewer numbers, and the malady does not reappear. Similarly 

 on board ship, when continued rough weather compels hatches and windows to 

 be closed, and passengers to remain below, fever will soon break out, because the 

 germs of the disease were in the air, and only waiting the conditions for their de- 

 velopment—their atmospheric fertilizer. Since 1869, typhoid fever, small-pox 

 and diphtheria are permanently on the increase here. Taking the two epochs 

 1869-1873, and 1879-1881, the victims for every 1,000 inhabitants have been re- 

 spectively :^for fever, 48 and 96 victims; diphtheria, 54 and loi ; small-pox, 19 

 and 74. This is the more strange, as while the fever augments at the rate of 100 

 per cent in Paris, the per centage diminishes in every other country. The hospi- 

 tal returns attest one decease for every fifteen patients down with typhus. It is 

 curious, while not the less remaining a truth, that this increase of fever has fol- 

 lowed the augmentation of the population. The occupants of furnished lodgings, 

 etc., have more than doubled; where only four were formerly accommodated, 

 now the same space is allocated to ten and fifteen persons. And these lodging- 

 houses progress in uncleanliness as the tenants increase. 



In a few of the grand arteries of Paris the construction of the sewers, etc., is 

 magnificent; but visit the upper and the older quarters of the city, and there the 

 sewage system will appear in all its primitive simplicity and horror. A continued 

 bed of black, putrid detritus, through which meanders a thread of water, insuffi- 

 cient to flush, but adequate to propagate pest. The supply of water is 400,000 

 cubic yards for a population of 2,000,000, and even when the promised 150,000 

 cubic yards additional are provided, the supply will be still inadequate. The 

 drinking-water is mixed with that specially conveyed and that of the Seine. Now 

 the latter receives beforehand the waste-water from the great night-soil depot, as 

 well as the dejections from suburban villages representing a collective population 

 of 120,000 souls ! Further, Paris is surrounded by a belt of insalubrious establish- 

 ments; there are 305 chemical works authoritatively pronounced deleterious and 

 dangerous frorn their emanations, unhappily too readily recognized ; there are 

 also 25 depoioirs for working up the night-soil, in addition to the others which re- 

 ceive daily 2,0 o tons of household refuse — there being no dust bins attached to 

 Paris houses, instead we have horrible night-soil reservoirs — emptied every morn- 

 ing into the street to be carted away, and shot down outside the fortifications. 



Brussels is a model in this respect for Paris and perhaps for other cities also. 



