124 
REPORT ON THE INDUSTRY OF MANURES. 
But as the populations assembled in these industrial encampments grew vaster and 
more dense, diseases of the so-called zymotic class became more and more rife among 
them ; and, though the respective causes of the several forms which zymotic or febrile 
disease assumes remained unknown, it was gradually established by professional in¬ 
vestigations, that they had all one common favouring condition in the putrescent 
effluvia of stagnant filth. 
To the few scientific inquirers who traced out this relation, it became apparent that 
the stagnant-cesspool system was radically vicious, and must be rooted out at any 
cost. They perceived that urban populations could only be preserved from febrile 
disease by the daily removal of their ejecta before its entry into the state of putrefac¬ 
tion ; and for this end, a system of house and street drains, kept constantly washed 
with abundant supplies of water, seemed to afford the readiest means. 
Here again the power of steam w T as on the side of progress. The public water- 
supply of towns, no longer led, as of old, in wooden pipes, to public fountains, thence 
to be fetched in pail and pitcher to the dwellings, was urged by steam-pumps at high 
pressure, through iron pipes having lateral branches, into the houses themselves, and 
even up to their highest floors. This permitted the adoption of Bramah’s watercloset 
(a capital invention) with its swift water-rush and trapped exit-drain, instead of the 
noisome privy, untrapped and waterless, with its stagnant pit of putrescence beneath. 
And though Bramah’s closet itself was a costly piece of mechanism, cheaper contri¬ 
vances of like kind soon followed, bringing within reach of the poor as w r ell as the rich 
the inestimable blessing of cleanly defecation. 
These ameliorations had, however, gained but little attention, and were but slowly 
making their way, when, in 1836, the views of their advocates received at once a terri¬ 
ble confirmation and a powerful impulse, by the sudden outburst of the Asiatic cholera. 
To the horrors of this appalling pestilence reference lias already been made in the Re¬ 
port on Disenfectants. The consternation it produced was universal; and it gave rise 
to that remarkable series of researches, conclusions, and practical reforms, known col¬ 
lectively as the modem sanitary movement. 
Under this new influence, the substitution of flowing drains for stagnant cesspools 
was carried on with much increased activity, though obstructed by a vehement con¬ 
troversy as to the proper size and form of the drains. Small circular stonew r are tubes 
were recommended by one party ; large brick flat-bottomed sewers by the other. The 
tubular system happily proved to be the cheapest as well as the best; and its advocates, 
after a ten years’ struggle, finally carried the day. Whole towns are now drained 
through 12-inch pipes, which would formerly have been deemed of scant dimension 
for the drainage of a single mansion. 
The application of the manurial streams from urban drains to irrigate farm lands 
was also warmly advocated by the sanitary reformers, but as warmly declared imprac¬ 
ticable by several leading engineers, whose views upon that part of the question pre¬ 
vailed. 
The second invasion of Asiatic cholera, in 1849, gave a new impulse to the abolition 
of cesspools; and the value of tubular drains, of small size and rapid scour, for their 
replacement, had by that time obtained very general recognition. But the leading 
engineers of England, while admitting, theoretically, the value of sewage to fertilize 
land, still denied the soundness and economy of the mechanical arrangements pro¬ 
posed by the sanitary' reformers for its distribution. On an engineering question, 
public opinion (not unnaturally) sided at the outset with the engineers. The new 
system has had, therefore, to encounter a professional opposition, all the more formida¬ 
ble for being thoroughly conscientious. Probably that opposition, w T itli the controversy 
it has engendered, and, above all, the experiments to which it has given rise, constitutes 
a wholesome ordeal to test the soundness of the new plan, and to bring about the 
correction of such weak points as it may present. But, in the mean time, the applica¬ 
tion of town sewage to farm lands, on an extensive, national scale, has stood, and still 
stands, adjourned. 
Hence the present condition, obviously transitional, of the great manufacturing and 
commercial towns of England; hence the insufferable pollution of her streams and 
rivers ; hence that prodigious squandering of the elements of human blood, for which 
she is so bitterly reproached by Liebig. 
