271 



The Supplement to the Tropical Agriculturist 



ESTATE SANITATION. 



Dk. Brooke's Lecture at Singapore. 



Yesterday morning in the Volunteer Drill 

 Hall Dr Brooke gave an interesting lecture on 

 estate sanitation dealing, as he said, not with 

 technical hospital points or treatment of the 

 sick but with a general consideration of the sur- 

 roundings of the coolies and the circumstances 

 leading to the common illnesses, in the first 

 place they had to consider the dwelling and 

 had to remember that the air was always full of 

 Moating dust and dirt which was thecairying 

 media of countless germs of all sorts. The majo- 

 rity of these settled in time on the floor, some 

 stuck to the walls and some rose to the ceilings. 

 Therefore the important point to deal with was 

 the floor and the worst type of floor they could 

 have was the sand floor which soaked up and re- 

 tained all the germs without possibility of clean- 

 sing. Then came the wood floor which was not 

 much better. The beet form of floor was a con- 

 crete floor with well smoothed surface raised 

 along the middle and graded to the sides. 

 The walls should be discontinued about two 

 inches fmra the ground so that the floor 

 could be thoroughly swilled over without 

 obstruction where the walls reached it. As 

 to the walls they were not so important, but 

 care must be taken. If of wood the wood must 

 be well dressed, smooth as possible, and should 

 be whitewashed about three times a year, a 

 disinfectant being worked into the whitewash. 

 The same remarks applied to ceilings. Iron of 

 course was the best for the walls and roof from 

 a sanitary point of view. 



As to ventilation the great thing was to 

 secure, if there were doors and windows, that 

 they were kept properly opened. In this part 

 of the world it was not difficult to arrange for 

 thorough ventilation. 



The great thing in all ventilation was a free 

 play of 



FRESH AIR AND SUNLIGHT 



into all buildings. In order to help to en- 

 sure this the jungle near buildings should 

 be cut away sufficiently from the lines be- 

 cause if it was not there was sure to be 

 dampness, darkness and stale air, splendid 

 media for the breeding of flies and other 

 objectionable conditions. Drains should be 

 well cut and kept clean and water should 

 not be allowed to settle and remain in them. 

 Turning to mosquitoes the lecturer men- 

 tioned that so important was reckoned the 

 part the mosquito played in illness that in 

 some West India islands it was now a punish- 

 able offence to have any larvae of them on the 

 premises. They then must also war against flies 

 and cleanliness was one of the greatest foe's 

 to the fly. Flies and bluebottles were perhaps 



THE MOST DANGEROUS OP ALL DISEASE SPREADING 

 AGENCIES. 



They bred at all times throughout the 

 year though there were four main seasons. 

 The eggs were laid in decomposing matter 

 either animal or vegetable and in a few days the 



larvae appeared as maggots feeding on the sur- 

 roundings. These in time became flies. The 

 great danger of flies to human beings was that 

 they were omnivorous feeders and whilst pre- 

 ferring filth would alight and feed on any food. 

 There was little doubt that dysentery, enteric 

 and cholera were in a very large number of 

 cases transmitted by flies first feeding on in- 

 fected filth and then alighting on human food 

 or in some such way conveying the infection to 

 human beings. Therefore they must take 

 care that night-soil and refuse matter of all 

 descriptions was not to be allowed to lie about. 

 The question of disposal of such refuse then 

 came in. It was known that for about three 

 feet down in the soil there were certain orga- 

 nisms which did not exist at a lower level which 

 when things were buried in that three feet acted 

 quickly in the decomposing of the substance 

 buried, thus returning it to its constituent parts. 

 If buried lower,these agencies did not act nearly 

 so quickly. So it came about that the best re- 

 fuse and other arrangements for armies, coolies 

 and other large bodies of persons, were shallow 

 pits about three feet deep. These should be 

 screened with kajang and fresh earth should be 

 thrown in until about a foot from the top when 

 the trench should be filled in and fresh ones 

 dug. In certain seasons it might be advisable 

 to add some quicklime with the earth, but it 

 was not necessarily a desirable thing to do that 

 always. Such pits must of course be away from 

 possibility of contaminating the water supply, or 

 of the drainage from them percolating into any 

 part of the camp, where it could be injurious, 



AS TO WATER 



if it were collected off iron or tiles it should be 

 pretty right and the great point in any case was 

 to remember that it should be kept in such a 

 receiver that it would be impossible for coolies 

 to dip into it with their vessels. It should only 

 be available through a tap or other such means. 

 If the roofs were of attap then it was better 

 to rely on wells. Wells were dug either shallow 

 or deep. If shallow they merely penetrated 

 the subsoil to the first impermeable layer in 

 which case they drew only the subsoil water. 

 Under those circumstances it would be seen 

 that such wells must be in a position abso- 

 lutely secure from any possible contamination 

 by percolation, etc., from any latrine or refuse 

 arrangements on the estate. If deep wells 

 were sunk the well would go through the first 

 impermeable layer to the second. It would 

 draw on a larger supply of water and would 

 not be liable to the contamination objection 

 as long as great care was taken to face the 

 eides of the well throughly satisfactorily, so 

 that the subsoil water could not drain into in. 

 In that case they would have a well penetrat- 

 ing the subsoil water but draining its water 

 supplies from area between the two imper- 

 meable surfaces. Turning more particularly 

 to disease the three most common they have 

 to face were 



MALARIA, ANKYLOSTOMIASIS AND BERI-BEKI. 



Dealing with the first Dr. Brooke gave a 

 ' clear demonstration of the life cycle of th<< 

 infection parasite in the human and in the 



