ON THE DECOMPOSITION AND METAMORPHOSIS OF ANIMAL BEINGS, AND ON THE
INFLUENCE THEY EXERCISE OVER THE SOIL AS A HABITAT FOR MAN.
During life animal bodies undergo continual decomposition and
recomposition; life is in fact a perpetual metamorphosis. Whilst alive,
the products of vitality (_excreta_) are returned to or deposited in or
on the surface of the earth, and carried by drainage and other means
into the nearest water, river, or stream; we have lived to see them
thrown _en masse_ into a tidal river the waters of which serve at the
same time to furnish most of that required for the economy of a vast
capital and many surrounding towns; in the same country the cesspools
and dead-wells constructed to receive the liquid and solid _excreta_ of
dwelling-houses are not unfrequently constructed close to the pump-well
which is to supply the inhabitants with pure water for culinary
purposes.
To these extraordinary facts I shall shortly return. They show the
extent to which intelligent, talented, shrewd men may suffer themselves
to be deluded and led aside from the path pointed out by common sense,
more especially when crotchets are substituted for principles; when
men fancy that in following out some imperfectly-observed inquiry,
they are imitating nature--that nature which is ever consonant with
herself, which created all animals, and which knows how to dispose of
their excreta when living, and of their remains when dead, without
detriment to the living. The Caffre, the Hottentot, the Bosjieman, the
North-American Indian, the Bedouin, require no sanitary arrangements,
no laws regulating, nor staff to carry out a code of theoretical
Utopian schemes, sure to revert on the heads of those foolish enough to
employ them; the excreta deposited on the earth disappear, so do also
the remains of animal life. We never hear of any pestilence, fever,
scurvy, dysentery, small-pox, hooping-cough, malignant sore-throat,
or other zymotics, originating amongst them. It would, indeed, almost
seem that such evils do actually owe their origin to human agency
and to human civilization; where civilized man makes his highest
endeavours, there his most signal failure occurs; experience teaches
him nothing; the insolence of wealth naturally leads to the contempt of
all knowledge derived from means otherwise than national and native.
In Britain the muddy banks of rivers, which in Holland and Belgium are
covered with vegetation, lie exposed, festering in the sun’s rays,
the fertile source of agues and other diseases; here they are being
continually exposed, or alternately covered with water, which is then
allowed to evaporate; this mud is not suffered to rest, but stirred
up in a variety of ways, as best suits the convenience of the parties
interested. It suits, for example, the proprietor of a long-neglected
drain or sewer, cesspool or filthy stagnant canal, or a common ditch,
which once was a clear rivulet, to cleanse it out. He selects the
warmest weather and the longest day for that special work, or he
spreads the contents of the cesspools of half a century’s collection on
the fields, suffering it to remain there for weeks, thus rendering the
roads all but impassable. The selected lives of the finest men in the
kingdom, petted, fed, clothed, and lodged at the public charge, without
anxiety or a care for to-morrow--the Guards of England--die under his
fostering hand, in the ratio of three to one of the care-worn and
toil-exhausted peasant, miserably fed, scantily clothed, badly lodged,
and full of anxiety for the morrow. Now, how comes this? Simply, I
believe, from this--that man, knowing much better than nature, has
chosen to take her place, to do her work clumsily, and to fancy that he
is doing it well; to interfere, and not to carry through the works he
has undertaken. What other proof can be required than the fact that, on
the frontiers of the Cape of Good Hope, in the healthiest country in
the world--a fact proved not only by the statistics of the celebrated
statistician, Major Tulloch, but by the evidence of all medical men who
have resided there,--where the mortality is not a half of what it is
amongst the most favoured counties of England--in such a country, where
every man might have had a mile square of ground to live on, military
arrangements contrived to break down whole regiments of the healthiest
young men England could produce.[29]
[29] Report, p. 176.
The Dutch Boers and Hottentots were astonished, as well they might
be. “Towards the end of June, 1836,” observes Major Tulloch, “very
decided symptoms of scurvy began to manifest themselves among part of
the 75th Regiment at Fort Armstrong, and subsequently extended to most
of the other stations along the frontier. The total number of cases
reported either as scorbutus or purpura, were 134, of which 4 proved
fatal; the others readily yielded to change of air, with improved
diet and accommodation.” As was to be expected, the Hottentot troops,
on the same ground, being left to act generally in accordance with the
dictates of their own common sense, wholly escaped the disease.
Let us now briefly review the means adopted by nature for the disposal
of those remains so embarrassing to the civilized, so innocuous to
man living in a semi-barbarous or savage state, and which prove to
the former a source of infinite expense, discomfort, and disease. The
problem has reference to the soil, to the air, to the water; to the
condition of all three as regards the preservation of animal life
generally, man included.
I have already remarked in a preceding chapter, that all organized
beings after death undergo a change, in consequence of which their
bodies, as such, disappear from the surface of the earth. In a short
time after the event, animal matters lose their cohesion; they are
dissipated into the air, leaving only the mineral elements they had
derived from the soil. The change commences immediately after death:
with the aid of moisture and exposure to the air, the bodies of
animals, as well as plants, undergo changes, the last of which are[30]
the conversion of their carbonic acid and of their hydrogen into water,
of their nitrogen into ammonia, of their sulphur into sulphuric acid.
Thus, their elements assume or resume forms in which they can again
serve as food to a new generation of plants and animals. “The same atom
of carbon which, as the constituent of a muscular fibre in the heart
of a man, assists to propel the blood through his frame, was perhaps
a constituent of the heart of one of his ancestors, and any atom of
nitrogen in our brain has perhaps been a part of the brain of an
Egyptian or of a negro.
[30] Liebig, 1851.
“As the intellect of the men of this generation draws the food
required for its development and cultivation from the products of the
intellectual activity of former times, so may the constituents or
elements of the bodies of a former generation pass into, and become
parts of, our own frames. The proximate cause of the changes which
occur in organized bodies after death is the action of the oxygen of
the air on many of their constituents. This action only takes place
when water--that is, moisture--is present, and requires a certain
temperature.”
The great agent in all these changes is oxygen, as has been already
sufficiently explained when speaking of the decomposition of vegetables
after death. I shall first attend to the influence these changes have
on the soil as producing agents, intended to restore to the soil those
vivifying powers which it never seems to lose when man interferes not;
and lastly, to consider briefly its influence on man himself.
The development of scarcely any plant can be imagined without the
assistance of nitrogen or of azotized materials. Now, under certain
conditions known to all botanists, this azote must come from rain
water, either in the form of atmospheric air, or under that of ammonia.
Chemists have, I think, proved that it originates in the ammonia
contained in the atmosphere, and not in the azote as it naturally
exists in the air. The problem is put and solved in this way by Liebig,
“Let us consider a farm suitably conducted, and of an extent sufficient
to maintain itself, ammonia exists there in a sufficient abundance in
rain water and snow; in the water of most fountains; it exists in the
air in abundance, and is being constantly renewed by the decomposition
of animal and vegetable bodies, and is restored to the soil by the
rain, and then absorbed by the roots of plants, and produces, according
to the organs, albumen, gluten, quinine, morphine, cyanogene, and a
great number of other crystallized combinations.”
The most decisive proof of the part played by ammonia in the
nourishment of plants is furnished us by the use of manure in the
cultivation of cereals and green forage. According to the distinguished
chemist so often quoted in this essay, animal manure (_fumier_) acts
solely by reason of its production of ammonia. The history of the
Peruvian guano, a substance so highly ammoniacal, proves all these
assertions; this celebrated manure, which fertilizes a soil (the
Peruvian) of the most remarkable sterility, consisting mainly of white
sand and argil, is composed chiefly of urates, urate of ammonia,
oxalate of ammonia, phosphate of ammonia, carbonate of ammonia, and
some other salts.
Thus did the ancient Peruvian, like the Chinese, stumble on the
solution of problems involving the fate of millions by simple
experience alone, wholly unaided by science, which steps in afterwards
and gives the _rationale_ of the process; teaches us that all wheats
do not equally abound in gluten; that rice is poor in azote; potatoes
equally so. Practical agriculturists still find difficulty in applying
with success the processes recommended by the chemist; but these, no
doubt, will gradually be overcome.
“Since we find azote[31] in all the lichens which grow on basaltic
rocks; that the fields produce more azote than is brought to them
in the shape of aliment; that we meet with azote in all soils
(_terrains_), even in minerals which happen never to come in contact
with organic matters; that in the atmosphere, in rain-water, and in
that of fountains or springs, in every description of soil we meet
with this azote under the form of ammonia, as a product of the slow
combustion or of the putrefaction of anterior generations; that the
production of azotized principles greatly increases in plants with the
quantity of ammonia presented to them in animal manure,--we may in
all safety conclude that _it is the ammonia of the atmosphere which
furnishes the azote to plants_.
[31] Traité de Chimie Organique. Par M. J. Liebig. pp. 88.
“It results from the foregoing[32] that the carbonic acid, the ammonia,
and the water, include in their elements the conditions necessary
for the production of all the principles of living beings. These
three bodies are the ultimate products of the putrefaction and of the
_eremacausis_ (slow combustion) of all animal and vegetable races. All
the products of the vital force, so numerous and so varied--all after
death return to the primitive forms in which they first appeared or
from which they originally sprung. Death, the complete dissolution of a
generation, is always the source of a new generation.”
[32] Liebig, _loc. cit._
Equally curious, but foreign to my present purpose, is the inquiry into
the sources of the inorganic principles in plants and animals. These
sources were inappreciable until a more refined chemistry appeared.
Sea-water contains only the 1/12,400th of its weight of carbonate
of lime, and yet this quantity suffices for the production of the
essential components of the shells of myriads of crustaceans and
corals. Whilst the atmosphere contains but 4/10,000ths to 6/10,000ths
of its volume of carbonic acid, the amount in sea water is more by a
hundred times, and yet in this medium we find another world of animal
and vegetable life, which finds re-united in the ammonia and carbonic
acid the same conditions which enable human beings on the surface of
the solid earth (_terra firma_) to live and to maintain their species.
It would even seem that the essential constituents of some organs have
altered in the course of ages, without affecting, or being materially
affected by, the principles of life. Thus it would seem that fossil
bones contain the fluate (fluorure de calcium) of calcium in much
larger quantities than the bones of recent animals; and the same remark
has been made in respect of the composition of the crania of men found
at Pompeii. They resemble in this respect the antediluvian fossil
remains.
Thus, imperceptibly, as it were, proceed the grand operations of
nature, and if accidentally any vast collection of excreta should
happen to be found, as in the guano islands of the dry regions of
America, they seem not to affect the life or health of those animals
which repose on them. It is the same in the dry regions of Southern
Africa, where sheep and cattle, in order to protect them from wild
animals, must, on the approach of evening, be collected into a fold
or kraal, surrounded by a strong fence of the mimosa, and carefully
shut in. On this surface, of no great extent, sheep and oxen stand or
rest for the evening: their excreta accumulate, but do not putrefy,
for the air on the kraal is pure comparatively, and never injurious to
the sheep or cattle; the surface of the kraal is, moreover, generally
dry, even when the soil may be accidentally inundated by rain, which,
when it falls, as it does occasionally, descends in torrents. From the
African soil is thus withdrawn by man the excreta of all the domestic
animals; the semi-barbarous Boer never returns it to the soil, and
thus the loss is permanent; but it would seem that this loss, caused
by man’s interference, in no shape, as far as can be observed, affects
the fertility of the soil, called on to reproduce only the native
pasture, or the wild herbs natural to it. It is otherwise when man
demands from the soil heavier exhausting crops of wheat and hemp,
tobacco, &c.: his interference with nature’s balance must be gone
into, or soon his hopes of a harvest would be in vain. Then comes the
theory of manures, a theory beset with difficulties, and which, besides
involving man in much labour and expense, is productive, or presumed
to be on sufficiently probable grounds the cause, of some, if not of
many, of the diseases which afflict humanity. However this may be,
whatever be the extent to which a dense population and a neglect of the
so-called sanitary regulations subject man to infirmity and disease,
one thing is certain--he has interfered with nature’s balance, and
must take on himself the whole task. If he shuts up a harbour mouth,
refusing entrance to the tide, confining within the harbour a portion
of that ocean water which nature intended should be constantly agitated
by tides and currents, he may expect as results that the shores of
that harbour will soon become uninhabitable by man. All animals
instinctively shun the sick, leaving them apart; man crowds them
together into close, ill-ventilated hospitals, sweeping off in hundreds
those whom the battle had spared.
It were foreign to the object of this work to enter more fully into
the history of that dissolution of animal structures which forms so
important a part of the materials we call manure, destined to restore
to the soil that which artificial crops had deprived it of. Every part
of animal bodies owes its origin to vegetables or plants, no part being
formed by the vital force, and thus all the remains of animals of
necessity form manures.
On the management of these, man’s civilization depends; without
agriculture there can be no dense population; without the dense
population there can be no civilization. On these points many
remarkably erroneous opinions have been, and still perhaps are,
maintained even by practical men, who nevertheless are often in
error--merely, it is true, as to the theory on which they fancy they
act, more rarely as to the practice they have from experience adopted.
In calmly considering this important question--the right management of
manures composed of the excreta or the remains of animal and vegetable
life, it becomes evident that several problems, atmospheric as well
as terrestrial, remain yet to be solved. The surface of the soil,
as modified by man’s labour, presents itself under a very different
aspect to what nature intended it to be. A lake may be drained with
much advantage to a country, but the surface so exposed cannot be too
soon cultivated, to prevent the spread of fevers sure to arise from
the decaying, fermenting, and putrefying of the lower forms of animal
and vegetable life thus brought into existence, especially when aided
by those epidemic constitutions of the atmosphere striking directly at
man’s existence on the earth.
For civilized man there is, there can be, no repose. There are forces
in nature against which, with all his industry, he may never be able to
prevail. The tropical forest returns upon him the instant, as it were,
that he ceases to hew it down, obliterating in an incredibly short time
all traces of human labour. The lands of Western France can scarcely be
secured from the inroads of the sands driven by western gales towards
the interior; the bog is checked only by constant labour, and the hill
where once the heath grew spontaneously, can only be retained in a
green and grassy condition by the constant watchfulness and labour of
men. Twenty years of neglect suffice to restore the heath, and to sweep
away all vestiges of human culture.[33]
[33] The “Sunderland Times” gives publicity to the following
frightful narrative, drawn up by Captain Edward Robinson, of
Sunderland, commander of the ship _Raleigh_, of South Shields:--“I
arrived at this place in the beginning of May, 1858, being sent
to bring home a vessel whose captain died of yellow fever; little
did I think, before leaving home, that I should have witnessed the
sufferings of so many of my fellow-creatures that were ill of this
dreadful epidemic. I was told it would be all over before I arrived,
but I found that, so far from that being the case, its ravages were
unmitigated. In the street that I lodged in, five in one family were
buried from the house in one day. The Rio journals were publishing
in their columns, ‘No cases of yellow fever to-day.’ One ship at the
port had seven captains dead before she could be brought out of the
place. The vessel--the _Raleigh_ of South Shields--that I have come
home in command of, had her captain, chief officer, second officer,
and four of her crew stricken down by the disease. On the day before
the Captain died I visited him at the hospital; I there witnessed
such sights as I hope never again to see--poor sailors in the height
of the fearful malady, with the black vomit, vomiting dark fluid
like coffee. I shall never forget the looks they gave me, and how
their poor dull eyes brightened as I gave them a word of comfort, and
told them they would get better. Next day, when I returned to see
them, I found the whole gone--the captain and six of his crew, all
dead and buried. Still, ‘No cases of fever,’ say the Rio journals.
The number carried off by yellow fever from February to May, 1858,
amounted to 1609, upwards of 600 of the deaths being among English
sailors. The presence of a plague fever is not to be wondered at, the
state of the town being a disgrace to civilized people. All manner of
filth is to be met with in most parts of the town. Dead animals and
filth I cannot describe meet your eye and offend your senses almost
everywhere.
“My brother, now sixty-eight years of age, and who has been
thirty-six years at Rio, informs me that he has often seen Europeans
on ’Change in the morning, who died and were buried on the same
evening. He has seen Rio cleared five times of Europeans. The
pestilence, he believes, comes from the flat marshy land near Rio.
The natives burn tar-barrels to purify the atmosphere.”