ON THE SERVITUDE OF RIVERS.
If the servitude of rivers be the noblest and most important victory
which man has obtained over the licentiousness of nature,[55] then
assuredly ancient civilizations bear away the palm in this respect from
the modern, and Britain must be permitted to occupy perhaps the lowest
place in the scale of those empires and nations who, by their industry
and knowledge, overcame the difficulties which the right management of
river courses presents to civilized man.
[55] “Decline and Fall,” vol. iii. p. 391, Milman’s edition.
More than forty centuries ago the Nile was completely at the service of
the ancient Egyptians, and the prosperity of Babylon and Nineveh leaves
no doubt as to the subjugation of the Tigris and the mighty Euphrates.
To come to later times, the Rhine itself, even in the days of the
early Roman emperors, must have been subjugated by the labours of the
primitive Batavians, and the revolt of Civilis, with his Batavian
legions, testifies as to the energy and intelligence of the race. And
now by the patient industry of their descendants, that land, seemingly
doomed by nature to be wasted on one side by the turbulent ocean, on
the other by the great rivers which traverse it, presents a spectacle
unequalled in the world. Even the despised Oriental race of China, that
unsolved problem in the history of mankind, whose capital the combined
forces of England and France now threaten, seems never to have had a
difficulty in mastering the great problems which the necessity for the
subjugation of rivers forces on civilized man; the Chinese waters have
been turned to the most profitable account; their deltas seem healthy,
and abound with life, with Chinese life, at least. The great rivers of
the Celestial empire give no trouble to its inhabitants; agriculture is
said to be perfect; no one seems to have proposed to throw the refuse
of Pekin into the nearest stream, that stream too, as it might happen
to be, the source from which the inhabitants of the capital obtain the
water required for their manufactures and for the arts of life.[56]
[56] The idea of employing the drainage of towns, partaking under
all circumstances more or less of the nature of sewage--using the
term in its most extensive sense, as comprising the excreta of the
entire population--seems first to have originated in Scotland, and
especially in the vicinity of the capital. The period is perhaps not
well known, but about the commencement of the present century we find
the system in full force, but limited to the great outlets of the
drainage and soiled water of the town. These great drains were not
strictly speaking sewers, but drains, for at that time there were
but few sewers, properly so called. If cesspools existed, they were
not emptied into the drains, or so-called town-sewers, so that the
matters contained in the two great outlets used for the purposes of
_foul-water irrigation_ bore little or no resemblance to the turbid,
frightful, and most putrescent mass _now_ conveyed into the Thames by
the sewers of London. This essential distinction in the quality of
the material has been ignored or passed over in the Reports of the
Board of Health. Not that the irrigating water was to be considered
as pure; on the contrary, it was extremely filthy; but it did not
_at that time_ contain the sewage of the town, properly speaking. It
probably now does so in consequence of the extension of the system of
water-closets, latrines, &c. The Scotch agriculturists who employed
the water of these vast foul drains, would have much preferred _pure
water_, but they had it not at their command. With this, such as
it was, they irrigated certain tracts of land, some of which were
originally barren wastes, converting them into meadows on which grew
a peculiar kind of grass, which cattle (milch cows) do not reject
after having been accustomed to its use. But the farmers knew well
that the abominable liquid they thus poured over their fields was
wholly unfit for the usual agricultural purposes; and thus in no
instance did they employ it as manure. The Grange drain was used
by one market-gardener only, simply for the purposes of irrigation
during droughts, but not with any view to the manuring of the garden.
By the time that all the cesspools of London have been poured into
the drains, and the system of drainage and sewage completed and
formed into one system, there arises the question as to how the
material is to be disposed of? The pouring it into the Thames at a
point below the influence of the tide is perhaps, after all, the
easiest and least expensive mode of escaping from the dilemma into
which the capital has been brought by the clumsy experiments of the
late Board of Health; but what the ultimate result of this additional
experiment may be, no one can foretel. If transmitted to the fields,
the farmers are sure to reject it as manure; but it might be conveyed
to barren waste lands, mere sandy wastes, the qualities of which no
doubt in time it would beneficially affect, converting them first
into meadows, and possibly afterwards into land favourable for the
growth of certain green crops. The liquid might also be conveyed to
estuaries which it might be desirable to fill up, and the numerous
small tidal harbours which the extension of railways will speedily
render of little or no value to the inhabitants.
The mud deposited in tidal harbours or on the banks of rivers within
the influence of the tide is of no value as a manure; when spread
over the fields, the result is the loss of the crops for some years.
Civilization on the banks of the Thames is no doubt very different and
very superior to what it possibly can be on the banks of the Yellow
River, but as, _non omnia possumus_, as different races and nations,
like individuals, have each their peculiar excellences and forms of
civilization, excelling in some, deficient in other qualities of
mind and body, it may undoubtedly happen that even the English of the
present day, the most perfectly civilized nation on the earth, or
that ever lived, might take a hint from some other nations on points
respecting which their otherwise inimitable genius seems to show some
slight deficiencies. As regards art, for example, we owe some hints
to the pitiful States of ancient Athens and Corinth; the despicable
Copt had connected the Mediterranean and Red Sea by a canal--the art
of re-opening which seems now to be lost; even the miserable native
Peruvian and Mexican had carried the arts of mining, of irrigation, and
the use of artificial manures, to an extent which surprises the men of
modern times, who, in Britain at least, think that civilization really
only appeared in the world during the reign of Queen Anne, as in France
the era of the Grand Monarque is universally admitted to be the period
when the French nation first threw off its primitive barbarous and
Celtic form of civilization, assuming the character and social habits
of that race to whom they owe their name, though not their descent. If
we cast our eyes over the surface of the earth, aided by the lights,
somewhat obscure, no doubt, of history, certain facts rising above the
ocean of detail appear as landmarks. The philosophic historian points
to, as peculiarly within his province, the transfer of the seat of
power from nation to nation, from race to race; how before Alexander
appeared there seemed to have been a Sesostris; after the son of Philip
came Julius the Dictator; then Napoleon; and drawing conclusions
as to the future from the past, historians see no improbability,
at least no impossibility, in New Zealand, after the lapse of many
centuries, producing the Hume of the southern hemisphere; whilst a
future capital arising in the desert regions of Siberia or Northern
America, may one day dictate to the world.[57] Ever at variance as
to the rise and fall of empires, they are yet agreed as to certain
facts and circumstances, many of which are still verifiable by the
geographical distribution of the existing rivers and mountain regions
of the globe; and even if man, in the plenitude of his scepticism,
were disposed to doubt, monuments exist, the undeniable work of human
hands, under circumstances implying the existence of a social system
which cannot well be misunderstood. “In the boundless annals of time,
man’s life and labours must equally be measured as a fleeting moment;”
but the Pyramids, and ruins of Karnac survive the Kaliffs and Cæsars,
the Ptolemies and Pharaohs, and countless monarchs and dynasties prior
even to them. Thus, whatever learned disputants may imagine as to
the primitive occupation of the valley of the Nile, the date of its
occupancy, and the race by whom it was first cultivated, we have in the
Pyramids incontestable proofs of a vast antiquity. Whatever historians
may say of the antiquity of ancient Rome, the _Cloaca Maxima_ of
Servius alone refutes the beautiful romance of Virgil--how Lavinius
and Turnus received Æneas ere Rome was; how Romulus and Remus founded
Rome, and were succeeded by seven kings, none of whom ever in reality
existed. But the existence of the _Cloaca Maxima_ and the researches
of the illustrious Niebuhr tell another tale more consonant with what
we know of man’s social and physical nature. In the most remote times,
man early adopted those measures of self-preservation which nature or
simple observation teaches him. History gives but little information
as to the measures adopted by ancient nations to secure public health;
and were it not for the remains of the _Cloaca Maxima_, so called, of
Servius Tullius, we should be as ignorant as Virgil assuredly was of
the ancient condition of Rome prior to the reign of the seven fabulous
kings.[58] Unquestionably the ancient race which preceded those grand
Romans who fill the page of history for nearly twenty centuries, had
discovered such means, and adopted measures for the safety of the
people. Authentic history, it is true, commenced with the Greeks and
Romans, and the history of Germany dates from Cæsar and Tacitus; but
the subjugation of the double-horned Rhine[59] must have commenced
long before “the building of the city.”[60] But the world as known to
the Romans, even during the reign of Trajan, was a contracted world
compared to what it is now. The tropical regions of the East, and
their vast populations, were wholly unknown to them; of Africa they
knew but little, of Asia still less, whilst the New World was as if
it existed not. Thus certain great problems in the history of mankind
were never presented to them, problems having a basis in facts which
men, for obvious reasons, are so unwilling to admit. The periplus of
the Mediterranean might almost be said to form the Roman world; beyond
the Rhine they made no conquests; the Danube formed their north-eastern
boundary; the eastern shores of the Black Sea were but rarely visited
by them; beyond the Euphrates and Tigris they, the Romans, never
gained a footing, whilst from tropical Africa they were entirely
excluded. Thus at no time were they called on to solve the problem as
to the possibility of European life maintaining its ground in tropical
regions; at no period were they called upon to give an opinion on
the momentous question which now agitates the world, the admission,
namely, of the primitive coloured races of men into the bosom of
civilized society.[61] “Wheresoever the Roman conquered, he inhabits;”
a just observation we owe to Seneca, confirmed by the history of that
wonderful people. As their conquests were confined to countries in
which the natives of Italy could at that time live and thrive, the
rapid extension of their empire, language, and forms of civilization,
need not be wondered at. Thus Rome successively became mistress of
many nations and races, but these were races with whom the Romans
could freely amalgamate; at no period of her history were they called
on to contend with the two great questions, the one social the other
physical, involved in the attempt to occupy by a white race a tropical
country, and a land inhabited by a purely savage race of coloured men;
the problems presented by modern history of a European race attempting
to hold India by the sword, to colonize the American world from the
Polar Sea to the Land of Fire, to inhabit, if not to cultivate, the
insalubrious Antilles, the banks of the Oronoco, or of the still more
dreadful Senegal, Gambia, and Niger, nowhere occur in Roman or Grecian
history; so that these are problems towards the solution of which
ancient history offers no assistance.
[57] Gibbon.
[58] Niebuhr.
[59] Extremique hominum, Morini Rhenusque bicornis. _Æneid_ viii.
[60] “Ab urbe condita;” from the building of the city (Rome), the era
fixed on by the Romans.
[61] This question was first agitated in the reign of Justinian, on
the occasion of a proposal on his part to form a treaty with the
negroes of Abyssinia. But the Abyssinians were not negroes.
A historian whose works I have already quoted on several occasions,
and who of all men had perhaps with most profit studied human nature,
has remarked that the aspiring genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to
ambition, deeming it more prudent to adopt virtue and merit for her
own wheresoever they were found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or
barbarians. This sacrifice it was easy for the Italian race to make;
naturally swarthy, and not unfrequently olive-coloured, they met with
no race with whom the Romans might not freely amalgamate. Far different
is it with modern Europe and her races; follow them to tropical India,
Africa, and America, and it will be seen that extinction seems the
sure result of all their efforts, whether they unite with the native
races or not. If they unite, their purer blood, as we may so call
it, soon disappears in the stream of a darker population; if they
spurn the union, climate, or as some would term it, malaria, speedily
exterminates their race and name.
In the first or second chapter of this Essay I ventured to suggest that
the discovery of the art to modify the earth, air, and waters of all
countries, so as to render them habitable for _all mankind_, was the
grand problem man is now called on to solve. In the construction of the
continents of the globe, nature seems to have had in view the formation
by centres of life of the living inhabitants of the globe. In these
centres she placed forms of life equal to sustain their existence,
occasionally aided, at other times unaided, by human industry. In the
virgin forests of America the aborigines lived and throve; under their
hands the earth underwent no modification; to the negro the deadly
regions of Central Africa are healthful and pleasant, though at times
abandoned to nature, at times deeply modified by human industry. India
and Java, the Malayan peninsula, as well as ancient Mexico and China,
were many of them highly cultivated regions, in which the aborigines
multiplied and enjoyed life; to the European they are premature graves.
But when it is attempted to transfer these centres of life to other
regions, the attempt has uniformly failed.
And yet the Romans, admitting that they never encountered a tropical
climate, seem to have colonized and thriven in countries in which the
natives of Western Europe cannot now maintain their ground, cannot
keep an army effective in the field for any length of time. The Roman
legions and citizens occupied the country of Numidia without an effort;
modern France, with an army larger than Rome ever had, can scarcely
maintain its position in Algeria. The young population are cut off in
their infancy, and it would seem that to maintain a Celtic race in
Algeria will test the energies of an empire which it is true formed but
a small province of imperial Rome. When we contrast late history with
the diffusion of Rome’s armies and citizens over the then known world,
we are forced to the conclusion, either that the Italian constitutions
of those days were stronger than those of the present inhabitants of
Europe, or that the form of civilization presented more safeguards for
the protection of health and life.
Nothing like the disasters of Varna and the Crimea seems ever to have
overtaken the Roman legions who guarded in the time of Trajan the
mouths of the Danube and the coasts of the Euxine, or restrained and
kept in check the barbarous Moors.
Amongst the arts practised by the ancients, but now lost, we must
include, I think, the knowledge of that discipline and practical
skill by which the Roman, Greek, and even Tartar generals, contrived
to keep their armies in the field in health and efficiency, whether
storming the castles of Jugurtha, or building walls of defence in that
land where English and French troops can neither fight nor march.[62]
Amongst the lost arts, still known it would seem to the Chinese, is
that of rendering salubrious the site of vast cities and camps. If I am
right in the principles I have endeavoured to establish throughout this
Essay, this art must have been based on the practical knowledge that,
generally speaking, the earth, as framed by nature, is not usually
an unhealthy _habitat_ for those races which grow up in her centres
of created life, and it is only when man interferes, and interferes
imperfectly, that the air and waters become pestilential to him. The
secret lies, no doubt, in agriculture, that first of human arts--that
art by which civilization exists. That human life is of as much value
by the banks of the Meuse, the Scheldt, and the Rhine, as in Sussex or
Surrey, is due to the industry of the inhabitants of Brabant and the
islands of the Rhine. On man in a great measure depends the position
which life is to hold in the scale of fate; he may raise it to its
maximum or sink it to zero. Centuries, it is true, may elapse before
human industry can render the banks of the Senegal, the Maranon, or the
Zambeze, a fit abode for civilized European man, but if the European
persist in transporting himself to these haunts, he must discover
the means to do so in safety, or perish in the attempt. Nature did
not make these countries for him, but she gave him reason, judgment,
observation, and the power of generalization, on the right use of
which faculties his safety must ever depend. The celebrated Jefferson
apologizes in one his confidential dispatches to his government for
noticing various political movements in countries seemingly remote
from and devoid of all interest to a citizen of the United States of
America, by remarking, that although such matters seem remote and
foreign to the object of his duties, they may yet at no distant period
swell into relations of sufficient magnitude to shake the world. As in
the political, so in the moral world; whether the empire of the Sultans
stand or fall, may be a matter of little import to an inhabitant of
Western Europe, nor need it distress him that the finest countries in
the world are nearly reduced to deserts under the administration of
the odious Turcoman. But it may be useful to him to be on his guard as
to the condition of countries through which the spirit of commerce now
urges the Western nations. Many of these countries do not improve; to
compare them with what they were in the days of Trajan were merely a
mockery; the low lands of the delta of the Danube are simply foci of
fever and pestilence, and are likely to continue so under their present
government.
[62] Trajan’s wall, between the Danube and the Euxine, at Kostenjie.
All history points to the East and to Africa as the seat and source of
plague, and the entanglement of Eastern affairs presses more and more
on the European nations; if we may trust the statistics of commerce,
Western Europe at times draws a large portion of her subsistence from
countries of which we know but little. On this I make no remark, my
object being merely to show that, however distant these lands lie,
their malarious condition has an influence over the European family of
nations, an influence which daily increases socially, and which, though
originating in the obscure and unknown East, has shown itself at times
at Rome and Moscow, London and Paris, in characters compared to which
all other evils appear insignificant.
All that lives or has lived is doomed to die, to waste away, and to
disappear; as it perishes it is consumed by nature’s processes, in such
a manner as to entail no danger to the living world, unless civilized
man interferes. For civilized man she has made no provision, saving the
bestowing on him a soil more or less fertile, a constitution more or
less equal to toil, a reasoning power, which in things practical must
not be measured by the loftiness of his conceptions and generalizations.
Whenever and wheresoever he congregates into masses, there “the earth,
the air, and the waters,” receive modifications from him, which, when
injurious, he alone can rectify. The most consolatory view which man
can take of such a condition of things is unquestionably to believe
them to a great extent remediable by his own labour and intelligence;
for even should he fail, there remains to him the consolation that he
has done his best.
CONCLUDING CHAPTER.
AUTHOR’S THEORY OF MALARIA.
It is easier to pull down than to build up; easier to refute than to
convince; easier to find fault than to suggest a remedy: and this
reflection may occur, and no doubt has occurred, to those, be they few
or many, who have perused the preceding chapters of this work. It may
now be asked of me explicitly, What is your theory? What is your remedy
for the evils complained of? To this I might reply, as the immortal
historian of the “Decline and Fall” is said to have done, “If you have
read certain chapters of my work with sufficient attention, you may
extract from them my meaning and my views;” but as this might imply on
my part either a Teutonic love for obscurity in phraseology, or a fear
to commit myself to any theory, I shall here sum up in a few words the
views I have arrived at after much reflection on the matter, during a
long and active life passed in a country supposed to be a hotbed of
malaria, the great source indeed of malaria in Western Europe, that
land for which nature has done so little and man so much.
1. There floats in the lower strata of the atmosphere in all regions
of the earth, but in very various proportions, for reasons already
explained, a poison or poisons, generated by the processes which nature
adopts for the destruction of past generations, and the reconstruction
of those to come; the destruction of the aged, the worn-out, the nearly
extinguished; the reconstruction of the organisms springing into life,
to occupy the place of those that were! Whether the poison be one or
many; whether it be a single species or one of a natural family, does
not affect the general conclusions. The diversity of its effects is no
proof of diversity in its essential nature or even origin; the living
principle is supposed to be of one nature everywhere and for ever;
yet see how varied are the results of this principle in moulding the
vegetable and animal worlds; how slight are the modifications even in
organic elements, which, when called into play, give rise to the most
astonishing and unexpected diversity of results. Why should it not
happen, then, with the poison, influence, or thing we call malaria,
which, modified by a chemical action too subtle for the scientific man
to observe, may yet, being so modified, give rise to an intermittent
or a remittent, a plague, a cholera, a diphtherite, a scarlatina, a
typhus, or a small-pox? Where did so many poisons come from? Whence
came the murrains, the vine-plague, the potato-destroying poison, which
was not at all new, neither was it confined to the potato? Whence came
the pestilences which destroyed the ancient world? which exterminated
at once whole species and genera now extinct? Of one thing we may be
assured, they did not die a natural death.
2. This poison, whatever it may be, floats in the lower regions of the
atmosphere, supported therein by the gaseous products of fermentation,
and more especially by the ammonia now proved to exist everywhere in
the atmosphere. It is the product, in fact, of the slow combustion
perpetually going on in the air, the earth, the waters, wherever, in
fact, animal or vegetable organisms are to be decomposed. We call it
putrefaction; it is in truth a _ferment_, and the fermentable matter,
that which gives rise to the ferment, is the immediate agent as well
as the result (for it is the nature of all ferments to reproduce their
process) of this fermentation, accumulated in the lower regions of the
atmosphere. Increased to the dangerous point by men’s imprudence or
ignorance, quickened by epidemic influences with whose nature we are
of course wholly unacquainted, and absorbed by the living tissues, it
excites that fermentation, that tendency to putrescence in the living
blood to whose results medical men have given so many appellations. At
times it is called ague; at times remittent fever; now it is small-pox;
and now a fatal diphtherite. To the transit of _ferments_ through the
air and to their inhalation by man, I ascribe the diseases usually
called zymotic. In ancient primitive times, when physicians were
rare,[63] and men did not interfere, a poison thus absorbed ran its
course from incubation to specific fermentation, with all its results,
in a given time, terminating in a crisis which might be calculated
and determined; and which might prove fatal or at once remove the
disease. A violent perspiration, a severe diarrhœa, a specific and
contagious eruption on the surface of the body, proved and effected
the elimination of the poison from the system. The ferment had done
its work; it had altered the mass of the blood, and the products of
the slow combustion (_putrescence_, rottenness, _fermentation_) were
discharged by the secretions, according to circumstances peculiar
to the constitution of the individual: as out of the same materials
serpents elaborate poisons of very different powers and qualities, so
the _ferment_, passing through various constitutions, gives rise to
various results. It pervades the air and clings to it, nor can it be
avoided but by a change of place of residence;[64] storms may, and no
doubt do, affect it, but they frequently fail in dislodging the poison;
intervening wide-spread oceans fail to interrupt its course;[65] and as
regards the caprice exhibited in its attacks, we have only to reflect
on the number of elements, vital, atmospheric, social, and chemical,
involved in its full maturescence. Our doubts on all such matters
originate probably in the coarse chemical theories and still coarser
chemical experiments which prevailed about thirty years ago, and from
their influence, from which men’s minds have not as yet escaped. The
atmosphere was declared to contain a few wide-spread gaseous elements,
and to be unalterable; the air of towns, of theatres, of large heated
apartments, crowded with people, was boldly asserted by chemists still
alive to be eudiometrically perfect.
[63] There were no medical men in Rome for the first five centuries
of her great career; and some have fancied that this fact explains
the astonishing number of armies which the republic found no
difficulty in sending into the field.
[64] When unassisted by other deleterious influences, the poison,
though all but universal over the locality, may not be destructive.
After the draining the Lake of Haarlem, the principal physician of
the district informed me that in 2000 cases of ague he had not lost a
patient.
[65] The choleraic ferment traversed in ships, no doubt, the
Atlantic, as typhus had often done before; but there are grounds for
believing that vegetable and animal matters in a state of rottenness
(fermentation), floating about in the air, are not unfrequently
transported to great and almost incredible distances. Ehrenberg and
Humboldt have particularly insisted on this fact, and have spoken of
distances traversed by these fermentable elements, which I hesitate
to quote from memory. Assuredly they were very great, extending to
some hundred miles from the seat of their origin.
§ 1. _Discovery of foreign bodies, the remains of animal and vegetable
life, and therefore_ FERMENTABLE, _in the air floating over canals,
ditches, marshes, &c._--Scientific chemists, as well as the professors
of the conjectural art, are occasionally behind the knowledge of
the careful, observing, unprejudiced practical men of the day.[66]
Experience taught me, whilst engaged in other inquiries, that the
sulphuretted hydrogen gas arising from the waters of the canals of
Holland is quite sufficient to spoil cottons printed with nitrate of
lead, used for dyeing yellow with the chromate of potass. The waters
of these canals hold this gas in solution in a certain sense, but from
May to September inclusive, the gas escapes during the night in great
abundance.
[66] England has often paid a high price for the first steps in
science. Mr. Papillion, in 1806, received from Government 10,000_l._
for the introduction of dyeing Turkey red; and his success was owing
to his knowledge of the water proper for the operation, which must be
void of fermentable bodies.
At this time vapours arising from the waters and floating over the
adjoining grounds, were found to contain minute portions of aquatic
plants mingled with the spores of fungi in vast abundance, together
with fragments of a membranous and gelatinous substance about to be
mentioned. To these must be added the remains of infusoria not to be
detected in dried specimens.
The injurious effects of water holding such substances, gaseous and
solid, in solution, we overcome by boiling and passing the steam
through (heated) iron pipes, and re-converting the steam into water.
By this process we get rid of the injurious effects of these foreign
matters, gaseous and solid, held in a kind of solution by the water, in
as far, at least, as they affect the colours used in dyeing.
During these examinations of the waters themselves, it was distinctly
observed that the infusoria and testaceous mollusca, microscopic and
otherwise, with which such waters abound, were developed in glutinous
membranes attached to the aquatic herbs abounding in these waters;
in short, these membranes seem to be the matrix for the growth,
nourishment, and production (using the term in a limited sense) of
these organized beings; they form an essential condition of their
existence.
The plants themselves were now washed in distilled water, and the
animal products were the semivalve and bivalve shells of which I
have preserved many specimens. The semivalve belong to the natural
families Buccinum, Lynceus, Helix, and Planorbis; the bivalve to the
Cardiacæ. The semivalves are the most abundant. By filtering the water
which remained after the shells had been removed, innumerable minute
particles like dust were discovered; these particles were ascertained
by the aid of the microscope to be mainly composed of minute fragments
of aquatic plants and of the spores of fungi; to these must, no doubt,
be added, although not visible when dried, the remains of zoophytes,
and of the glutinous membranes forming the matrix of animal aquatic
life.
I now endeavoured to obtain the glutinous membrane or matrix in which
these testaceous mollusca were obviously developed, apart and distinct
from the animals themselves. To attain this desirable point we filled
a glass receiver with water containing the aquatic plants and shells,
and the gelatinous membrane already spoken of. The receiver was now
inverted upon a plate, and water poured into the plate to the depth of
half an inch.
In a few days the receiver became filled with gas, forcing the water
downwards into the plate on which the receiver rested; and although
after the first day we could not discover any of the gelatinous
membranes in the lower part of the receiver, yet that in the plate
became like a flaky jelly, attaching itself to blades of grass or
leaves. The surface exposed to the atmosphere became dry and brittle,
and in this state resembled thin layers of gum; the substance thus
desiccated strongly resembled jelly.
The glutinous membrane of which frequent mention has been made above,
is of a very viscid nature, and when combined with any animal substance
in a state of transition or fermentation, it is poisonous. It is, I
believe, generally viewed as the matrix for the development of the ova
of these shell fish, and considered as a product or secretion of the
parent. Into this question I enter not, leaving it, if it be one, to
others.
On exposing for a few days some of the larger testaceous mollusca
alive to the atmosphere of the room at a temperature varying from
65° to 70° Fahr., strong proofs were obtained that ammonia was
produced in the interior of the shell confined therein by the membrane
called operculum, sealing, as it were, the aperture into the shell
hermetically. On puncturing this membrane the presence of ammoniacal
gas could be distinctly traced by the odour.
I submit to the consideration of professed physiologists the following
questions:--1st. What are the effects likely to result to man from
the inhalation of these microscopic and gaseous products in a state
of decomposition, they being certainly present in the vapours arising
from the waters of canals, ditches, &c., in many countries, especially
during the nights of spring, summer, and autumn? 2nd. What are the evil
effects likely to arise to man from the use of such waters as drink,
or when employed for culinary purposes? Lastly: As the gelatinous
membranes alluded to are the nidus of various forms of organic life,
and contain those forms, developed and undeveloped, occasionally in a
state of decomposition, to which of the two forms of life, animal or
vegetable, or to both, is to be ascribed the deleterious effects on
man, and ascribed by physicians to an unknown poison called Malaria,
designated by them as “a poison, an influence, a miasm, a thing
unknown”? Ferments and putrescence are not “things unknown:” let us
adhere to facts.
§ 2. Thus the principle of wasting away by the action of the
atmosphere, of the rotting of vegetable and animal substances, first
developed by the illustrious Liebig, opened up to me the path to
that theory which seems to reconcile the conflicting observations of
pathologists,--that vegetable and animal matters do ferment or rot, and
that in this state of rottenness they are carried through the air, was
with me no longer a matter of doubt; next came the question, as to the
effects of such matters on man when inhaled by respiration and conveyed
directly into the living, circulating blood, that most complex of all
fluids, that mysterious compound out of which nature constructs the
animal world.
This slow wasting takes place in any damp place under ground, and
the ferments assume the form of vapour when such places happen to be
warmer than the open air; it is in this state that the odour is so
sensible to us after a hot dry day or during cold nights. There is no
smell in rainy or damp weather. It is in the spring and autumn months
when ferments from slow combustion abound, aided by the amount of heat
and moisture which then prevail, and by the floating of plants. The
poison thus generated is known to be the product of a ferment, and
like many such products, possesses the quality of fermenting other
organic compounds with which it may come in contact. Introduced into
the living system of man, it finds in certain individuals the material
already disposed to pass into fermentation. It incubates, and this
incubation is measured as to time by a variety of circumstances I need
not enumerate. In cold countries the incubation is slow, extending over
many months; not that the ferment differs, but its action is modified
by the existing condition of the accessories to its action and power.
The ferment introduced into the blood in autumn may not show its full
action on the living fluids until the following spring, or early in
summer: in hot countries it is different; there the ferment, aided by
numerous adjuncts, acts almost immediately; fever sets in, causing
violent reaction of the conservative powers of nature; delirium,
coma, vomiting, death. The mass of the blood has undergone a change
in all its constituents, and dissolution and putrefaction are swift
in reducing the frame, even whilst life is still present, to that
state to which all that lives must come at last; whilst the physician
loses himself in vague theories of an “unknown poison”--a malaria, a
something not strictly a gas, a matter or influence differing from all
chemical or other agents known, the scientific chemist steps in, and
shows that the subtle matter they so anxiously endeavour to discover,
is a process constantly going on before their eyes; a chemical process,
universal; the process, in short, on which in a great measure depends
the disposal of the dead and effete remains of the organic world; the
growth, the nourishment, the renovator of each successive generation of
the same world.
§ 3. It may be now fully admitted that ammonia is the active principle
or stimulus to vegetable life, as shown by the extraordinary growth
of plants in warm damp climates; in these malaria--as we may still
call the poison so developed--exists to the greatest extent, as in the
Pontine Marshes, by the banks of the Po, Ferrara and Bologna. From
various experiments and observations, I have been led to the conclusion
that the ammonia constantly present in the atmosphere, and derived
from several sources,[67] is the chief cause of the activity which the
ferment, or poison, displays under different and varying circumstances.
There prevails, in truth, an excess of ammonia in such an atmosphere,
resulting from the nitrogen uniting with hydrogen; from the
decomposition of vegetable matter carrying decayed animal matter along
with it; and from the ammonia always existing in the spawn and in the
matter of the shells of infusoria. All my researches into the effects
which the various gases have upon animal tissues, showed ammonia
to be the most destructive; in fact, no animal tissue can resist
complete decomposition by caustic ammonia. I conclude, therefore, that
vegetable and animal matter in a state of fermentation, and mixed
with ammonia, is the cause or essence of that destructive power which
physicians ascribe to malaria. Should this fermentable matter pass in
a concentrated state into the torrent of the circulation, the globules
of the blood are destroyed, and become black; the person is in the
cold stage of fever; next, the vegetable matter ferments, causing the
hot stage. No one in Holland has any doubt as to the origin of this
power, but ascribes it uniformly to the draining of some lake; and it
amounts almost to a demonstration that the air under such circumstances
is poisonous or injurious to health. It was even foretold by several
writers that fevers would result from draining the lake of Haarlem, as
took place in the years 1608, 1641, 1727, 1779, from draining various
polders.[68]
[67] The ammonia always present in the atmosphere is probably derived
chiefly from the union of nitrogen and hydrogen; but much of it also
no doubt has its source in the fermentation of animal and vegetable
remains.
[68] Baron von Lynden.
If the principles I have announced be correct, the extreme
impropriety--not to use a stronger phrase--of carrying on excavations
or other extensive works on the muddy banks of rivers, in marshy or
swampy forests, during the summer months, must be obvious to all
reflecting persons. No work should be done in such places, or in ponds,
after the month of April, for it is warm dry weather that sets malaria
afloat. But if this ferment--which we may strictly call malaria, as
producing a malarious condition of the air--be, as I apprehend it is,
the cause of fever, why should not medical men direct their attention
more earnestly to the question in how far such a fermentation of the
blood may be met by the employment of substances known to resist and
counteract fermentation? Are physicians agreed on the nature of fevers,
and the best means of curing them?[69]
[69] I have known many persons sickly from the effects of
intermitting fever or malaria from a residence in warm climates,
and who have suffered and perished from an injudicious treatment.
Ill-formed or incomplete agues are extremely common, even in the
south of England, in London especially. They show themselves under a
variety of forms, and with much severity, in the cases of those who,
having once visited a true malarious climate, are ever afterwards
more or less liable to a return of the disease. Let men reflect;
simple truths travel slowly, yet are truths notwithstanding. The
death of the well-known M. Soyer was evidently caused by his wholly
misunderstanding the nature of his complaint, which, in fact, was a
fever originally caught in the Crimea.
Nothing can be more interesting, in a natural history point of view,
than to watch the results upon large bodies of water, of attempts,
more or less successful, to complete their drainage. Thus during the
operations carried on for this purpose at Haarlem, there sprung up in
the dry places of the more elevated parts an extraordinary quantity
of plants and herbs, which were not seen in the country before they
flowered and sent millions of seeds with their diminutive rocket,
silky tails into the air. They were too minute to be seen upon grass,
but the footpaths were covered with them, and a current of wind might
carry them to distant regions, as the sand is carried from the coast of
Africa into the track of the Brazilian packets, to such an extent as to
make it uncomfortable to walk on deck. It is by no means, therefore,
improbable that those errant seeds came from a foreign land, the native
produce of other countries. Continuing my observations into the transit
of seeds, I have found them to be the cause of shallow canals in
England being full of heretofore unknown water-plants, to the extent of
impeding navigation.
It is mentioned in the “Kosmos” of Humboldt, that the dust resulting
from eruptions of the volcanic mountains in South America was observed
in Spain. But if currents of wind thus carry seeds and other matters
hundreds of miles through the air, no one can be surprised that the
aquatic plants above alluded to floated to England through the air,
from Holland; these plants, new to the land of their accidental
adoption, bring with them a new corresponding animal life; in due time
they come to maturity and die, and now Nature steps in to take up the
task, and complete her work; her process is simple in appearance,
most complex in its results: a malarious air--malarious at least to
man--appears, as it may be, for the first time in the district,
ascribed by medical men to every cause but the true one. In their
anxiety to discover a cause, they fix on some antiquated drain, or
cesspool, or ditch, by the margins of which many generations of a
stout peasantry had lived and died; or they dive into the pump-well,
and triumphantly exhibit infusoria, not unlikely engaged at the very
moment in purifying the water: it never seems to have occurred to them
that _ferments_ only appear in certain combinations of the air--under
circumstances which only occasionally occur, and that (which is most
lamentable to think of, as in the case of London and the Thames) the
evil is most frequently of man’s creation.[70]
[70] A friend who resided long on the Grotevisch Rivière, and in het
land den Caffre, informs me that if the Zuureveld be ploughed up, or
altered by the burning, for example, of a Caffre hut, the sour grass,
whence the district derives its name, disappears, and sweet herbage
of various kinds take its place. None of these exist naturally in the
district, so that the seeds must come from great distances.
The operations of nature when left to herself never vary; they may
always be calculated on, foretold, anticipated; on this assured and
irrefutable fact all science rests. It is only when man interferes and
modifies the elements at work that nature seems to alter her processes;
a disturbing agent has been thrust into the machinery, and the mischief
it effects must either be counteracted or entirely overcome. So long
as the Lake of Haarlem was a lake, or mere, so long were its banks
healthy; but drain it partially, and you must be prepared for the
result. There is no middle course; that which was once a lake or sea
cannot be left in the condition of a putrid, imperfectly-drained,
fermenting mass of mud, teeming with animal and vegetable life, and
with a material for which oxygen is the natural ferment; it must be
arrested by the hands which drained, or attempted to drain it, and
converted into a healthy pasture-land or a wheat-field; if left to
nature, centuries might elapse before that which was once a sea would
become a healthy forest or natural meadow, during which period man,
should he persist in residing on its banks, must undergo the penalty of
his own want of knowledge.[71]
[71] The effects of partial and incomplete drainage have ever been
the same. In 1823, when the new Polder was made at Neusen-on-the
Sheldt, small-pox raged in the neighbouring villages to such an
extent that the children were forbidden to attend school. The effects
are to be seen now in persons over sixty years of age, bearing the
marks of the epidemic. The whole atmosphere of the district was
infected.
CONCLUSION.
In the first chapters of this work I have endeavoured to trace briefly
yet succinctly the history of opinion as to the nature of malaria,
showing how, prior to the appearance of Macculloch, no one had given
to the theory of malaria any definite form. In those which followed I
have traced the history of his presumed discovery from the period of
its first announcement to its distinct refutation by one of the ablest
of statisticians, showing that, notwithstanding this refutation, the
physician having, in fact, no other theory to fall back on, persisted
in adopting the theory, and, as a natural result, continued to look
for and to find in cesspools and ditches, lay-stalls and drains, that
unknown and mysterious poison which they had been told by Macculloch
was the cause of all diseases. Confounding it with bad odours of all
sorts, they sought for remedies in the destruction of bad odours; at
times they sealed the sewers and cesspools hermetically and by law:
now they opened up and ventilated the sewers and cesspools also by
law;[72] and lastly, on finding that they had poisoned the air of the
metropolis, and that every experiment they made ended in the precisely
opposite results to what they had foretold would happen, as a last
resource they endeavour now so to dilute the refuse of living beings
as to render it, if possible, inodorous at least. This experiment will
also fail. Like true Englishmen, they would not let well alone; they
would attempt to solve questions by main force, which science, aided
by long and careful experience and observation, could alone effect.
At last Liebig appeared, and gave to the whole question a new phasis
and another basis; that basis rests on an appeal to the great laws
of nature, and not on any researches into the occult, hidden, and
mysterious laws regulating the building up and the constructing of the
various forms of animal and vegetable life. In this grand work the
vital force is in action, whereas the destructive processes by which
she annihilates her own forms are strictly chemical; there science may
be properly said to commence in respect of the great question I now
consider; and uniting experience with observation, it seems to lead to
the following conclusions, which, if legitimate, will probably stand
their ground until overthrown or modified by the larger experience of
succeeding ages.
[72] _Law_ being no body, and quite irresponsible, the blame of these
cruel experiments on the health of the population cannot readily be
brought home to any one.
§ 1. Seeing that _putrescent_, that is _fermentable_, bodies can and
do exert so great an influence on organic compounds when dead (in the
sense we consider them), it is not unreasonable to suppose that animal
structures and fluids capable of being fermented, may undergo the same
process, that is, fermentation, putrescence, and destruction, or decay,
whilst forming a part of the living body.
§ 2. As no sane person doubts the harmony which can be shown to exist
in all created beings, so it is probable, if not quite certain,
that the laws of decomposition must be as regular as the laws of
composition; or, in other words, that as the organic matter is without
a doubt the same throughout the living world, and as living bodies are
built up or constructed agreeably to certain laws, so, undoubtedly,
will they be decomposed by laws equally fixed and constant; invariable;
and the nature of the material so decomposed will in no shape be
affected by those specific differences which bestow on organic nature
her beauteous and varied aspect.
§ 3. The final product, whether of composition or decomposition, must
be the same in all respectively; the infusoria, as well as the gigantic
whale and elephant, are composed, when living, of the same elementary
tissues, and, when dead, decompose into elements the same in all.
§ 4. The presence of microscopic animalcules in putrifying substances
is viewed by Liebig as accidental, and not essential to putrefaction
or to fermentation; but even admitting this, it is certain that
animalcules (infusoria) exist everywhere in inconceivable numbers;
if water contains these putrescible substances, as it must always
do, then the infusoria are also present in the water; let this water
evaporate under the heat of the sun, and we have in a fermentable,
that is, putrescible, condition countless myriads of infusoria wafted
through the atmosphere, and in certain localities (Pontine Marshes,
Sierra Leone, the Orinoco, &c.) forming almost a constant, if not a
constituent, part of the atmosphere; they pass into living bodies by
respiration: hence the hitherto inexplicable phenomena with regard to
the influence of locality in the production of disease, whether derived
from animal or vegetable remains.
§ 5. Thus these bodies cause disease, not as live matter, but as dead,
fermentable, and putrescible. They are not found everywhere, nor are
they everywhere liable to pass into fermentation, a certain degree
of heat being necessary for the production of this condition. Their
evil effects on human life are chiefly felt when man places himself in
a false position in regard to them. In pursuit of gain, national or
individual, he seeks the deltas of the rivers of hot climates, plunges
within the tropics, despising the maxims of the natives of those
countries, encamps on or near putrescent marshes, hoping to escape
destruction; prances in holiday costume across the Dobrudscha, as if
he were on the Champs Elysées or the grassy slopes of Hyde Park, and
having carried folly and contempt for the experience of others to its
height, pays the sad penalty sure to be exacted by nature from all
those who despise her warnings.
These are my opinions, supported, I believe, by facts and figures, and
to those who honour me with a perusal of the preceding chapters I beg
leave to say, in the words of the ancient poet and satirist--
Si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti, si non--his utere mecum.
APPENDIX.
To avoid overloading the text, I have thrown into the form of an
Appendix several Notes more or less intimately connected with the great
question considered in the body of the work. They may be read with or
without any reference to the various headings they treat of.
NOTE 1.
By the deodorizing processes now in use, the ammonia, the most valuable
constituent of manures, is destroyed; whilst by the flushing of sewers
with an excessive quantity of water it is dissipated; hence the low
value, or rather the absolute inutility of the sewage of large towns,
as manure, when diluted with the surface drainage and other waters,
excepting in the case of reclaiming waste lands, in order to convert
them into meadows of so highly objectionable a character that no one
can or will reside near them. The smell from such meadows is most
abominable.
Even in such cases an outfall must be provided for the surplus sewage
waters, either into a river or into the sea, for the meadows to be
irrigated require but little of it, and that only occasionally and
during droughts.
The fixing the ammonia is the great difficulty the agriculturist
experiences in all questions respecting those manures which naturally
contain or produce it. Its volatility is so great that it not only
readily escapes into the air, but carries along with it, especially
from waters, bodies at the moment in a state of slow combustion; or,
in other words, ferments, capable of exciting fermentation in other
fermentable bodies.
It may even pass into the condition of caustic ammonia.[73]
[73] It is to be remarked that the specific gravity of ammoniacal gas
is 53·619; can it be wondered at that this gas should carry bodies
from waters which are in a state of slow combustion; during its
transit through the air it may even become caustic ammonia?
In a well written pamphlet by Mr. Ward,[74] the unhappy and fatal
mistake of mixing the surface drainage with the sewage of London is
clearly pointed out for the hundredth time, but the parties who planned
the scheme will no more take notice of such facts than they did fifteen
or twenty years ago, when they commenced their work of polluting the
Thames and other rivers.
[74] _Purification of the Thames_. A Letter by F. O. Ward, Esq.,
addressed to William Coningham, Esq., M.P. London: Renshaw, Strand.
To Mr. Ward’s proposal of purifying the river and fertilizing the land
by tubular drainage, there are, however, many serious objections.
NOTE 2.--_Habits of the_ WILDE, _in desert or uninhabited countries._
It is known to sportsmen that in the neighbourhood of hills, partridges
leave the low grounds at the approach of evening, and take themselves
to the hilly or more elevated district. Nature has taught them a very
curious fact in meteorology, namely, that on leaving the valley at
night, and ascending the hill, the temperature of the air increases
up to a certain elevation, and from that point upwards decreases. The
game ascends to the point of highest temperature, and there remains for
the evening. A friend informs me that whilst crossing the high range
of mountains forming the watershed between the Grotevisch Rivière and
the Zondag Rivière, in Southern Africa, he experienced as he ascended
intense cold, with heavy dews in the valleys through which ran the
sources of the Grotevisch Rivière, and these continued until he reached
the base of the crowning heights. Here the party slept in a mud-hut
belonging to a Dutch boer. During the ascent they saw no game; but on
climbing about half way up the remaining steep before daybreak next
morning, they reached a spot where all the large game had congregated.
It was the point of greatest warmth, generally a few hundred feet above
the plain, and below the summit of the mountain. From this point to the
summit the cold was most intense, and snow lay on the high peaks of the
mountains.
When the shells of infusoria are driven about in the atmosphere
they lose their carbonate of lime by the acid fermentation; and the
membranous portions having the properties of coagulated albumen,
and being also fermentable, may, by passing into the blood, become
excitants of fermentation. This has been already fully explained in the
text.[75]
[75] It is mentioned in the Report on the Wine Disease in Portugal,
that the _oidium_ was first discovered at Margate; if this was the
case, might it not have originated from the phosphorescent beings in
sea water, observed by all travellers in the evening on the coasts
of Flanders, and known in Holland as Zee Vlam? The potato disease is
thought by some to have sprung from the same cause.
NOTE 3.--_Moss._
In the _Annales de Chimie_, volume xxix. p. 225, mention is made that
the walls of various towns which had been under water for several
years having become exposed, from the effects of a dry summer and
hot weather, became covered with vegetable matter, the decomposition
of which infected the atmosphere, and caused great sickness in the
environs, and particularly where buildings were situated in marshes in
communication with the sea. The vegetation, in fact, was composed of
lichens.
On a recent visit to Bangor, in North Wales, I was struck with the nice
firm turf which was in the garden; and upon inquiring of the gardener,
he informed me that the turf came from the seeds blown from the hills,
and that it required great care on the part of the farmers to keep
it under, or it would be exceedingly injurious to land and buildings
if neglected. When it grows on walls it splits them by the capillary
expansion of its roots between the bricks operated upon by damp hot
weather. I have seen this lichen destroy the pillars of a gateway three
feet thick.
Mill-stones are made in Germany out of granite, by means of willow pegs
being driven into holes thinly covered with water; this causes the
willow to act by capillary expansion, forcing the mill-stones of the
required size out of the rock.
It is of the utmost importance that the nature of moss and lichen
generally should be well studied before constructing sewers, &c., where
vegetable matter exists near water.
Was it by similar means that the ancient Egyptians and inhabitants of
Arabia Petræa cut from the solid rock those vast blocks, in effecting
which they do not seem to have availed themselves of any modern
mechanical contrivances?
The _ferment_, that is, the substances in a state of fermentation
and capable of acting on all fermentable bodies, and especially on
complex organic compounds, as the blood, exist at all times in the
air, but are as a matter of course greatly influenced by a variety of
circumstances as regards their effects on man and other animals. It is
proved by indubitable evidence that this morbific matter is as capable
of entering the system when minute particles of it are diffused in the
atmosphere as when it is directly introduced into the blood vessels by
a wound. When diffused in the air, these noxious particles are conveyed
into the system through the thin and delicate walls of the air-vesicles
of the lungs in the act of respiration. The mode in which the
air-vesicles are formed and disposed is such as to give to the human
lungs an almost incredible extent of absorbing surface, while at every
point of this surface there is a vascular tube ready to receive any
substance imbibed by it and to carry it at once into the current of the
circulation. Thus in certain seasons boils and carbuncles prevail to an
alarming extent, and surgeons dare not operate lest they should lose
their patients from erysipelas and inflammations, running rapidly into
putrescence. In large hospitals the poisonous air in all probability is
constantly present, attacking those who have been previously weakened
by disease or wounds, or loss of blood; in other words, all those in
whom from any circumstance (as by the depression of the vital powers)
the complex organic compounds are held loosely together, and are
therefore prepared to ferment or to fall into putrescence.
NOTE 4.--_Anther._
This name is given in botany to the summit or top of the stamen
containing the fertilizing fruit-producing dust.
Pollen is the fecundating dust or fine substance, like flour, meal, or
fine bran.
Farina, contained in the anther of flowers and plants, which is
dispersed on their stigma for impregnation, form a vegetable essence
constituting the particular nature of a substance forming the flower
existing in other plants of the same family or kind.
Spore or sporule in botany is that product of flowerless plants which
performs the function of seeds.
These substances float in the atmosphere, and are the cause of the hay
fever; and when they fall into water and are afterwards left upon mud
they ferment, and being dried up by the sun they fly about with the
spawn of animals.
Should seeds fly about with the pollen or farina in a state of decay
and full of carbonic acid, the oxygen of the atmosphere, so essential
to human beings, is diminished, and the pollen or seeds are inhaled
into the lungs, and are thus exposed to the action of oxygen whilst
circulating with the blood.
The result of an excess of carbon in the air is the growth of ferns on
barren rocks, which ferns subsequently become coal.
The same cause will always produce the same results. When vegetable
matters rise from a large surface of earth or mud (as from the
newly-drained forty thousand acres of the lake of Haarlem), there are
no plants there to inhale the carbonic acid, and to give out oxygen;
but those seeds being rotten or in a state of ferment, the oxygen
for the decomposition is drawn from the atmosphere alone, and human
beings who breathe this malaria have fever; the atmosphere is tainted:
miasms of carbon with hydrogen gas (the lightest thing known) fly
about, carrying them to points where sulphurous gases may find them
a resting-place on mud and shallow waters: these give rise to fever,
cholera, plague, and to all zymotic diseases.
NOTE 5.--_Algæ, or Sea-weeds of the Mediterranean Sea._
These were examined by Doctor Derbes, Professor of Sciences, and
Captain Solier, of Marseilles, and the result of their researches was
published in the supplement of the _Comtes Rendus_ of the Académie des
Sciences, in answer to a prize essay proposed by the Academy in 1847.
Nothing can exceed the botanical truthfulness of the memoir presented
by these gentlemen to the Academy. After a careful examination of the
substances resulting from the mass of decayed sea-weed in the delta
of the various rivers which flow into the Mediterranean Sea, they
arrived at the conclusion that the product is the cause of fevers, by
generating a malaria which the vital powers are unequal to meet. Thus
the cholera existed at Marseilles in 1850; all knowledge of the extent
of its destructive ravages was withheld from the public; and the truth
of this is in some measure proved by the readiness with which the Board
of Health recommend the quarantine of ten to fifteen days, when it was
reported that the plague or cholera existed at Tripoli, Sicily, and
Sardinia.--July, 1858.
NOTE 6.--_The Marseilles Board of Health and Quarantine._
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “TIMES.”
_Challice._
Sir,--The Board of Health of Marseilles are about to establish
quarantine regulations of ten days’ and fifteen days’ duration at
that port, because “a dreadful plague rages at Bengazzi, in Tripoli,
and is extending along the coast to Alexandria.” Individuals are to
be confined ten days, and in certain cases fifteen days. Letters are
to be purified, &c., and some 1500 Piedmontese labourers are likely
to be disturbed and thrown out of work if the proposed quarantine
regulations are established. And so this is the sum total of sanitary
experience for the last ten years! The French authorities saw all
quarantine regulations broken down during the Crimean war; in fact,
joined the British in abolishing a quarantine at Smyrna, at Galipoli,
at Constantinople, at Sinope, at Samsoon, at Trebizonde, at Malta, and
even at Marseilles, and indeed at all other ports and places used by
the transports and by the armies in alliance.
The armies certainly did not escape fever and cholera in their most
terrible forms. The French, the British, and the Sardinians alike
suffered, both in the field and in hospital, at the commencement. The
British alone, however, by means of sanitary works and regulations,
reduced cholera attacks to a _minimum_, and almost abolished fever. A
few simple alterations to the sewers from the great hospitals on the
Bosphorus and other places; ventilation--in many instances by simply
breaking the top squares of windows; regular scavenging without and
cleansing within the works of the hospitals, and the regular use of
the lime-wash brush, emptied the hospital wards of fever patients.
Surface cleansing at Balaklava, and regular scavenging both the shores
and water of the harbour; covering the shallow graves with gravel
and earth; scavenging the camp, and daily disinfecting all latrines,
soon reduced the British army mortality below home or barrack life
and service. The French neglected these things, or blundered in their
execution, as the 5000 deaths per month in the hospitals on the
Bosphorus, from hospital and camp fever alone, during the last three
months of the war, testify. That certain diseases are contagious,
such as scarlatina, measles, small-pox, &c., few will deny. That
plague and cholera are equally contagious many doubt. Sanitary works
and regulations of a very primitive and simple kind can certainly
check the contagibility of cholera, as witness the experience in
Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Tynemouth, in London, in many other English
towns and districts, and in the British hospitals and camps throughout
the Crimean campaign. The lesson taught by experience ought to be
this:--Let the Board of Health at Marseilles cleanse the town, cause
all the foul rooms to be ventilated and lime-washed, disinfect the
foul cesspools and sewage, and cut it off by “interception” from
the harbour and docks, and they may bid defiance to plague from any
quarter. It may be imported in silks, &c., but it will not spread.
Let there be a sanitary staff for the harbour, and another for the
town, armed with brooms, barrows, and lime-wash brushes, in place of
sidearms and muskets, and persons may land at once to go about their
business, and merchandize may be forwarded to its destination without
fear of consequences. During periods of epidemics there can be cholera
without dirt; improper food and mental and bodily exhaustion may bring
on isolated cases; but to have cholera rampant there must be numbers
of human beings fouling air, earth, and water, and habitually living
contrary to known sanitary laws and entirely neglecting sanitary
precautions.
CIVIL ENGINEER.
_August 14, 1858._
NOTE 7.--_Mud, Water, and Air._
The presence of water and a suitable temperature are indispensable
conditions of the oxidizing process of decay, just as they are
necessary to putrefaction and fermentation. The sides of ponds and
ditches being covered by water during the winter months, in the
spring the air becoming warmer and drier, the water diminishes, the
decay of vegetable seeds, plants, and all woody fibres enter now
into putrefaction, communicating the process to each other, and by
the transmission of decomposition from one particle to another, a
great number of plants give out various gases to the atmosphere while
decaying upon mud, rise into the air, meeting other gases, and then,
floating about, they compose and decompose each other. Hence the bad
odour from the mud-banks of the Thames, near the outfalls of the sewage.
NOTE 8.
I have known fevers cured by a change of the sleeping room from the
south to the north aspect, and still more readily by removing from one
side of the street to the other. All should avoid dwelling near canals,
ponds, or ditches habitually covered with a white froth; this is
formed, in fact, of gases rising through humus swimming on the water,
and contains living beings as well as fermentable substances.
It is important to men who work and sleep in the same house to have
the day or working-rooms to the north, where the sun never enters, and
to sleep in a room to the east or south. A room to the west, looking
to the west, is not healthy, particularly in summer months, being the
hottest in the evening. Gnats, moths, and flies collect there, and are
at least harassing, if not hurtful, particularly to infants.
No person not a native of a marshy country should travel overland in
the evening; dew causes a strong action in vapours, mists, &c. Invalids
and soldiers after fatigue, should halt in the daytime, and march in
the evening, to avoid being chilled.
NOTE 9.
A sure remedy against the malaria of ditches, ponds, &c., is to fill
the water-courses with water; never suffer them to be so far dried up
that the spawn of living creatures may attach itself to the sides of
grass, bushes, &c., and afterwards to dry and spread about like the
seeds of flowers, in the environs. The mud which is left exposed to the
air gives out, on drying, various gases, which being mixed with the
fossils of the mud, contaminate the air, and are breathed by the people
in the neighbourhood.
A circular drain, having a double current, well understood by the
hydraulic engineers of Holland, is the kind of drain I prefer.
THE END.
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