AN AMERICAN OPINION.

Northern Advocate, 19 January 1920, Page 3

AN AMERICAN OPINION.

Having made this position clear, I think it will be safe for me to quote the following from a book written 13 y< ars ago by Professor Sedgwick, pf Boston, who has been regarded as the highest sanitary autuhority in America. What Professor Sedgwick says will at least satisfy my readers that tl c startling paragraphs appearing: to-day regarding air and microbes really deal with very old knowledge. The (following is itaken from a chapter on "Some Popular Beliefs as to Certain Special and Peculiar Causes of Disease":— THE BELIEF IN DANGERS FROM SEWER-GAS. There i s reason to bli»'v e that the dan-crs of sewev-gas have been very s.'i'.iii exaggerated. There is no doubt, of course, that sewage is a dej composing liquid, and that it may, and j often does, contain the germs of specific diseases. But, on the other

hand, the facts that workmen frequently spend much of their time in s"wers with impunity, or work upon or above sewage in sewerage-purifica-tion works or on sewage farms, seem to show that experience does not confirm the idea that the gases cmana- fing from sewage are always or necessarily dangerous.

If, now, we turn to stagnant sewI age, such as might result from broken drains, or such a s commonly exists in cesspools, we may reasonably expect t° find more dangerous and more concentrated gases. We may even suppose that these are posisonous, and that, finding their way into human habitations, they are capable of producing sickness. There is no reason to doubt that some cases of sickness have, in fact, thus arisen, and to this extent the belief in sewer-gas as accaves c of disease is probably sound. In such cases, however, the sickness may be expected to take either the form of sudden, sharp attacks, suggestive of poisoning, or else th e form of malaise and a general lowering of the vital resistance, lassi. tare, weakness, etc.

While thus freely granting the possible efficiency of sewer-gas as a general poison and depressant, we are very far from allowing the remaining and more popular form of the belief in sewer-gas—namely, that it is capable of directly producing specific diseases, such as typhoid fever and diphtheria, which absolutely require for their genesis the introduction into the body of their own peculiar gtrms.