On the size of house drains, and the use and misuse of traps / by John Honeyman.

  • Honeyman, John, 1831-1914.
Date:
[1887]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the size of house drains, and the use and misuse of traps / by John Honeyman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    1/18
    [Excerpt from Vol. IX. of the Transactions of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain.] On the size of House Drains, and the use and misuse of Traps by John Honeyman, F.R.I.B.A. Read September 22nd, 1887, at the Congress of the Institute, held at Bolton. Recent investigations seem to prove that certain elements of ordinary atmospheric air—chiefly oxygen—acting upon aerobian microbes, destroy or attenuate their virulence, so that in either case the microbe, as a vehicle of specific disease, is annihilated.* The significance of this fact, in relation to the proper ventila- tion of~sewers and house drains, has, I think, not been generally realized. The earlier advocates of such ventilation—among whom I venture to claim a place—aimed rather at the dilu- tion and rapid removal of sewage emanations than at the destruction of associated microscopic organisms; but they were not without some apprehension of the truth, since demonstrated, that such organisms are practically destroyed by the action of atmospheric oxygen. It is exactly thirty years since I myself published a paper on sewer ventilation, in which I endeavoured to arouse the better class of my fellow citizens by pointing out the fact that while they in the most elevated and least crowded parts of the city had to submit to the frequent recurrence of epidemic disease, the people on the banks of the river (which seemed to them so pestiferous) were almost exempt from any- thing of the kind. And my explanation was this: I said that the agents at work in both localities were identical, but they were differently developed. In the one case tainted air, undi- luted and confined for miles in unventilated sewers, remained pestilential, whereas in the other, mingling freely with the * I venture parenthetically to ask, if the protective effect of attenuated virus can only be obtained by inoculation ? There seem to be grounds for inferring that it may also be obtained by inspiration or absorption.