Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
BAD DRAINS;
AND
HOW TO TEST THEM:
WITH
NOTES ON THE VENTILATION OF SEWERS, DRAINS, AND SANITARY FITTINGS, AND THE ORIGIN AND TRANSMISSION OF ZYMOTIC DISEASE.
INTRODUCTION.
The impetus given to improvements in sanitarymatters by the conferences held during last year atthe Health Exhibition, as well as the desire shownby engineers and others to improve the sanitarycondition of towns, has induced me to publish thefollowing system of detecting defects in drainageand sanitary fittings.
It must be admitted that grave errors have beencommitted by engineers, architects, and builders,both in planning the fittings of houses and inlaying drains to the main sewers, during the lasttwenty years. These errors have been found tohave produced serious effects on the public health.They have also been the means of establishingthroughout the country a number of SanitaryProtection Societies.
These institutions have been the means of savingmany useful lives, but I trust that the day is not fardistant when these societies will cease to exist, andivsuch terms as “scientific plumbers” and “sanitaryarrangements carried out on the most scientificprinciples” will be a thing of the past.
To my mind it is a national disgrace to know thatin this nineteenth century architects and buildersfixed fittings to houses, and laid drains from housesto sewers, which affected the health of the occupantsto such an extent that it was necessary to establishinsurance offices to protect persons from being killedby workmen or their employers. What a page forfuture historians!
The work or purpose of drains and sanitary fittingsis to carry off by water the soil and dirt from ourhouses, and it is lamentable to think that this cannotbe done without injury to life.
What should we say if the same precautions werenecessary to test or examine the work of other professionsor trades?
To many the system described in these pages mayappear new, but it is by no means so, as it was discoveredand used by me in 1880, and was then themeans of finding out serious defects in a supposedperfect drainage system.
From that time up to the present it has proved ofconsiderable value in determining any defect in thevconstruction of drains and fittings. With thedetector and anemometer I have been enabled todiscover the cause of so many failures in sewer ventilation,and to trace the origin and transmission ofmany cases of zymotic disease.
The object of this work is to place the sameknowledge in the hands of every person connectedwith sanitary work.