THE Otago Witness. DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1862.

Otago Witness, Issue 556, 26 July 1862, Page 4

THE Otago Witness. DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1862.

That cleanliness is next to godliness, is a saying that has been so often repeated, that one is apt to fail to remark its extreme beauty and truthfulness. It would be difficult however to compress more of sound sense and deep wisdom into a proverbial saying than is comprised in this old andolt quoted aphorism. Cleanliness truly is next to godliness, and the researches of modern science have tended to exhibit the connection hetween the two in a most startling light. It has been shown that not only does personal cleanliness tend to promote the health of the individual, and to encourage those feelings of self-respect, which are the very ground-work of morality; but that the truth of the saying holds good in a still more startling manner when— leaving individuals — we come to deal with large masses of people. It, hay boon shown that filth is not only the badge of poverty, misery, and disease, but that it reacts in the extension of those evils, and that it hae the most debasing effect on the morality, as well as on the health of a community. It has moreover been proved that the epidemic diseases, which were at one time believed to be the direct and miraculous visitation of the wrath of the Almighty, are the natural and inevitable consequence of the disregard and contravention of the physical laws appointed by Him for the regulation of the material world. It has been demonstrated that the plague, the cholera, and similar diseases, follow of necessity the neglect of natural laws, and accordingly when such visitations occur in modern days, people instead of resigning themselves to a blind terror, proceed literally to set their houses in order, and with 1 lie broom and the whitewash brush to do away with the offence that has brought down the punishment. And in so doing they in no way derogate from the dignity of the Almighty disposer of life and death, but they show only a larger appreciation of the grandeur of the laws of that beneficent Ruler, who is the same to-day as yesterday. But it is not only in applying a remedy to disease that modern science has conferred a benefit on mankind, it has shown how to prevent as well as how to cure, and in this respect has done even more signal service. By inoculation and vaccination the ravages of the small pox have been sta3'cd ; by care in other rcsps-v.ts, the frightful scourge of leprosy has become unknown in European countries ; and ,by attention to sanitary laws, the typhus fever and other similar maladies have been greatly checked in the large cities of Europe. The public health question, indeed, is now justly recognised as one of the most important in every community, and the wisest heads, the noblest heart I',1 ', tire everywhere occupied with it; cither in enquiring into the influences by which it is afheted, in practically applying the information thus acquired, or in disseminating in a popular form a knowldge of the most obvious and important of the principles to be attended to. The ultimate results of these enquiries and of these teachings may be briefly summed up in the enumeration of the essentials of health; pure air, pure water, a sufficiency of wholesome food, good houses and clothing. Of these assentials, the latter three must, under ordinary circumstances, be left for people to provide for themselves ; all that can be done being to spread as widely as possible among the masses a knowledge of what is wholesome, and what is the reverse. The'subjects of temperance and personal cleanliness are included in the same category. With the subjects of air and water however, the case :s different; these fill properly within the province of the constituted authorities ; they being matters with which individuals are powerless to deal. Yet it is not too much to say, that upon the purity of the air and water depends not only the health, but the very existence of the people. By the action ' of the never resting forces of nature, by evapo-

ration and condensation, by the winds of heaven, the water and air are usually kept in such a state of purity as to be wholesome to man ; but when large bodies of people congregate in one, spot the defiling process is apt to become more rapid than that of purification, and then disease sets in. Iv a lecture, lately delivered in Edinburgh Dr. Gairdner stated the case in the following terms : — " By far the largest part of the weight of our bodies and of all oig.mie bodies, is undo up rither of air and water, or of their elements hi a different state of combination. Probably, nineteeirtwo'itieths of the living human body have this composition. Now, it is one of the clc.trest teachings of modern physiology that the gn^es which compose organic matter aie never at rest — never confined to oug place, or to one org.mibod body; on the contrary, they are the common property of animals and plants, and at every moment thin circulate from the one kingdom of nature to the oilier, through the vast oceans of air and water that surround our globe. All nature, considered with reference to air and water, is a perpetual ebb and flow ot o\y^en, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbonic acid ; or rather a cycle of restless changes so complete and constant as to have no general ebb and flow. Meteorology and hydrology arc but the record of a marvellous sciiesof inovisioii3agaiust stagnation; physioloay is an immense laboratory of chemical reactions commensurate with all the forms of vital accivity. Consider now that the verj essence of Avhat we call life in our bodies consists in perpetual change, perpetual waste, perpetual motion of atoim ; and you can hardly fail to see in all this the purpose and foresight of tho Creator. What right have we in air and water that we can call our own? what interest, that is not shared by the millions of our own kind, by tlit; countless millions of organised beings besides ourselves ? It is ours to use air and water, and then to pass thorn on ; but woe be to the man or the community that detains or imprisons the-e, his servants of the hour, iv their further execution of God's endless work ! The mysterious Liws of creation are their own avengers ; and the very a' ti mutes of air and waler that make them the ministers of lift 1 , convert them, when abused, into the instruments of death. That vjry pouvr of dissolving and decomposing organic matters of all kinds which is inherent in both, and without which we could Hot live for a moment, renders them the ready recipients and communicators of ail manner of noxious influences, the result of partial decomposition; which morbid influences, or poisons, it is their province u'timately again to destroy and to render harmless. So that by tampering v, ith air and water, by obstructing- their course, by causing- them to stagnate around us, we inevitably impregnate them wiUi that, whigh iv certain circumstances becomes dangerooj to our fellowmen."

In another part of the same lecture he says that the two factors of almost all epidemic diseases, and of a great number of chronic diseases, are air and water combed with the effete products of the human body, or with organic matter in a state of decompc 'iition. This is not the testimony of an individual merely, but is the putting in a condensed form of the combined testimony of all authorities. All are agreed that pure air and water arc essentials of health, and that every means should be adopted to prevent their being contaminated. But, in great cities, the accumulation of noxious matters proceeds at an alarmingly rapid rate if means are not taken for their removal, and thus the necessity of proper arrangements for sewerage is forced upon the attention of those who make the hedith of towns their study — and " how to dispose of the sewege ?" has become one of the great problems of the day. In old and densely inhabited cities, where a false and unscientific syste.n of sewerage has gradually grown up, and where disease bus become in consequence not occasional but chronic, the most earnest efforts are being made to effect a reform, but the enormous value of property stands fearfully in the way of any radical alteration. In London, for instance, the scwoge has all been run for ages into the Thames, and the consequence of making that noble river the main sewer of a great city has been, as was lately stated by a leading London paper,that the average of mortality hat been kept at a high rate, and that diarrhoea, dintheria, and typhus fever are never absent. Yet although the evil is recognised and deplored; the cost of any radical change would be so great that hitherto scarcely anything has been attempted.

Yet it is well known that this sewage if conveyed away from the city, would be of almost incredible value as manure, and thus it is felt there is a double waste in keeping it to poison the river and infect the air.

We have not made the above remarks without an object. It is our desire to direct the attention of the poople of Dunedin, and of the authorities, to the warning to be deduced from the result of neglect elsewhere ; so that, while it is yet time, means may be taken to provide pure water, and by conveying off the sewage to prevent the air being poisoned by the stagnating accumulations of filth and noxious matter. Situated as Dunedin is, it is by no means difficult to obtain a fall to run off the sewage, and it is the easiest possib'e thing to let it run into the bay. But to let the sewage of the city ruu into a close bay, is even more dangerous than, aa in the case of London, to let it fall into a flowing river, for in the case of the river the stream carries it away, whereas in a bay, such as that of Dunedin, there is no escape.

It remains, therefore, to be seen what can be done. In London, the way proposed for meeting the difficu ty is to put the sewerage to its natural use as a, fertilizer of the soil, and one plan for carrying this into effect is to construct rcservoiis on high places, to pump the liquid sewage into these reservoirs, and to distribute it as required. Another proposes to apply it to a specific purpose, — the reclamation of 20,000 acres of land on the Essex coast. Thia would be a tremendous work, as the sewage would have to be conveyed in brick culverts a distance of thirty-seven miles, and would require a capital of two millions of pounds ; yet, responsible men have offered to construct the works if only guaranteed the sewage for fifty years, and would even agree to share the profits over ten per cent, on" the capital expended. We instance this as an example of the enormous value attached to sewage, and also as affording a hint of what must most probably be the ultimate method ot disposing of the sewage of Dunedin. It is clear that to pour it into the Bay is little less than suicide ; to allow it to stagnate about the town is equally bud; and it cannot be emptied into the <?ea for there is not sufficient fall. But between the town and the Ocean Beach there is an expanse of low sandy land which is at present of comparatively little use, but which might very probably be made of immense value if the sewage of the town were to be employed in its fertilization. We do not pronounce dogmatically upon this point, but we do say that the authorities ought without delay to institute an enquiry as to the best means of disposing of the sewage to the city, and that such a comprehensive plan should be adopted as would provide for the extension of the town and avoid the necessity of continual alteration and reconstruction of works.