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sufficient for the ventilation of probably fifty miles of 
sewers and drains, many of them on very steep ground, 
and the tide flowing up twice in twenty-four hours. 
Mr. Weaver found, as he expected, the epidemic most 
severe on the outskirts and suburbs, in places of fine situa- 
tion, and open country. Here was street upon street where 
the sewage had spared scarcely a house ; and in almost all 
was a more or less powerful odour of sewer gas. Now 
this was remarkable, and the explanation he discovered, 
after some trouble, although the authorities could tell him 
nothing of it, that many of these streets had a special 
sewer laid down in front of the houses, with a branch run 
under the floors of each building, which were filled up with 
ashes, and the pipe left open for the purpose of removing 
sub-soil water ! The lower end of each sub-soil sewer 
joined the mains, contact being supposed to be broken by a 
syphon, but as these were never looked at from the day of 
being laid, and as no water flowed from the cellars, in dry 
weather the syphon speedily became untrapped, and an unin- 
terrupted flow of gas proceeded into the houses. 
A very good proof of this being the mode of propagation 
of the disease was furnished in one half of a street, that is 
one side of it, being without any drainage whatever and had 
not a single case of small-pox. Now here the privies and 
slops overflowed the yard and lane and the stench was most 
unbearable, yet this side escaped. Opposite, all was much 
cleaner to the eye, but the sewage gas was within the houses 
and so was the epidemic. So much for our vaunted sani- 
tation ! 
Now assuming this statement of Mr. Weaver’s to be true, 
it appears that in some cases the germs or particles of 
