July 10, 1885.] 



SCIENCE, 



39 



In the light of our present knowledge, few intel- 

 ligent parents would knowingly allow their 

 children to use the milk of tuberculous cows ; 

 but as yet we are powerless to prevent its sale 

 in our cities. 



A third class of diseases grows out of ani- 

 mal parasites in the flesh of the animals we 

 use as food. Of these, trichiniasis has of late 

 played the most sensational role. For the last 

 few years this has been prominently before 

 the public ; but in our own country, curiously 

 enough, our officials, because of commercial 

 complications, have tried to hide the danger, 

 rather than guard against it. Outside of the 

 advertisements of quack medicines, no more 

 astonishing sanitary literature can be found 

 than some of the public, not to say official, 

 utterances regarding trichinae in the swine of 

 this countr3^ Our author gives numerous 

 statistics, both from other sources and from 

 original investigations, which show that the 

 disease is common enough and wide-spread 

 enough to need more careful watching. For- 

 tunately, each household can protect itself from 

 this class of diseases by thorough cooking ; 

 but, considering the customs of cookery, there 

 should be other protection. Tape- worm be- 

 longs in this class of diseases. We think that 

 the author overrates the danger from the Tae- 

 nia medio-canellata derived from beef (more 

 probably from veal?), and quotes Thudicum 

 of twenty years ago to show that the rarity 

 of the cysticercus in beef makes it more dan- 

 gerous, — a doctrine from which we entirely 

 dissent. In this country the vast majority of 

 tape-worms appears to be the T. solium which 

 we get from ' measley ' pork. 



There is still another wa}^ in which the flesh 

 of diseased animals probably aff"ects the public 

 health. Animals are subject to certain dis- 

 eases which afi*ect their flesh, but which are 

 not, so far as known, transmitted to man. 

 The so-called hog-cholera is such a disease ; 

 yet experience has shown the propriety of for- 

 bidding the sale of the pork in the markets 

 when sufficiently affected to have the red spots. 



The author advocates much more extensive 

 inspection of animals, but we fear that his zeal 

 has led him to impracticable lengths. When 

 we consider the enormous number of animals 

 slaughtered by the producers of the same on 

 their own farms, and the production of milk 

 on small farms not called ' dairy ' farms, we 

 fear that a system of inspection which will 

 extend to ' all animals slaughtered,' and to all 

 the cows on all the farms which may supply 

 milk for sale, is impracticable. Nor would he, 

 we think, have written that ' city inspection [of 



milk] is next to useless^' if he had had an}^ 

 experience in official sanitation in a large city, 

 drawing its milk-supply from regions over 

 which its officers had no jurisdiction whatever. 

 Because we cannot have the most perfect 

 means of protection, it is nonsense to decry the 

 only means that are available, and which, ex- 

 perience shows, make a great improvement in 

 affairs. And, however necessary and important 

 official inspection may be, one cannot hope for 

 ' the unquestionable guaranteeing ' of safet}- by 

 any official board : that is asking a great deal. 

 His short chapter on hippophag}^, as prac- 

 tised in Europe, is both interesting and oppor- 

 tune. The growing consumption of this cheap, 

 nutritious, and wholesome meat is a good 

 thing, which the next generation will doubtless 

 find common in all enlightened countries. The 

 poorest chapter in the book is that relating to 

 infection and bacteria, some portions of which 

 (and notably the botanic portion) are lame. 

 But the book is an important one : it deals 

 with an important subject, and is the reposi- 

 tory of much useful information in an interest- 

 ing and available shape. 



HO USE-DRA IN A GE. 



Of the numerous books which have appeared 

 during the past year, devoted to this subject, 

 many are too exclusively taken up with the 

 plumbing and drainage of houses and tene- 

 ments in cities and towns provided with sew- 

 erage systems. In Col. Waring's book, entitled 

 ' How to drain a house,' the individual house- 

 holder, to whom the volume is chiefly addressed, 

 will find valuable counsel, whether his domicile 

 is in a crowded city, or in a countr}" or sub- 

 urban village where connection with public 

 sewers is impossible. 



The great value to the state, of sanitary 

 works, such as pure water-supplies and the 

 proper drainage for the removal of sewage, has 

 been successfully demonstrated, and the same 

 principle is none the less true of each individ- 

 ual dwelling. 



The first and principal portion of the book 

 treats mainly of that portion of the drainage 

 S3'stem which is included within the interior of 

 the house. The closing two chapters are de- 

 voted to the disposal of the sewage of isolated 

 houses, and the special method of sub-surface 

 irrigation. 



The stj'le is concise, and the illustrations are 

 clear and simple, and shorn of all unnecessarj^ 



How to drain a house. Practical information for homehold- 

 ers. By George E. Waring, jun., M. Inst. C.E. New York, 

 ^o«, 1885. 222 p. 12°. 



