38
sein. Dazu bedarf es mehrer Jahre und dies um so mehr, als die
Medicinalstatistik eine der schwierigsten und bis jetzt noch un
sichersten ist wegen der vielen in Rechnung zu bringenden resp.
zu eliminirenden heterogenen und störenden Elemente. Wir sind da
her auf die Erfahrungen angewiesen, welche in dem Geburtslande
der Schwemmkanäle gemacht worden sind. Von diesen Angaben
mögen hier einige Platz finden, welchen meines Wissens niemals
öffentlich widersprochen ist.
Der bekannte Physiker John Tyndall sagt in einer Besprechung der
Arbeit des Dr. William Budd über das „Typhoid Fever“ in der Times vom
9. November 1874: „The seat of the disease being the intestine, with well-
appointed water-closets it is not in the sick-room that the mischief is done,
but often at a distance from the sick-room, through the agency of the sewer,
which Budd graphically describes as „a direct continuation of the diseased
intestine,“ Hence the mystic power of „sewer gas.“ Hence the inability of
the metropolitan practitioner to trace the disease to its origin.“
Dr. Charles Murchison. welcher, so viel mir bekannt, eines guten Rufes
unter den Aerzten sich erfreut, bespricht in seiner Treatise on the continued
fevers of Great-Britain. secd. edit. 1873 die von ihm wahrgenommene Zunahme
des „enteric or pythogenic fever.“ Er führt an, dass die Zunahme der Er
krankungsfälle wohl zuzuschreiben sei der baulichen Ausdehnung des Fieber-
hospitales und der ungewöhnlich hohen Temperatur einiger Jahre, fährt dann
aber fort „but it is not a little remarcable that this increased prevalence of
enteric fever in the metropolis has been contemporaneous with the completion
of the main drainage scheine“ (1. c. p. 443).
Der Dr. H. Littlejohn, medical Officer of health for the City of Edin
burgh, beschreibt die sanitären Verhältnisse dieser Stadt wie folgt: „Edinburgh
oonsists of two distinet towns — an old and an new — but with very different
populations. The new town is inhabited by the better classes, and is pre-
eminently a water-closet town, whereas the old town consists for the most
part, of strongly-built tenements, which in the process of years have undergone
repeated subdivisions, until individual rooms, by means of partitions, are found
to contain several families.“
„It has been found impracticable to supply these tenants with ordinary
water-closet accommodation. and to this day they have to make use of pails
for the reception of the excreta of those confined to the house. These pails are
brought to the Street daily and emptied into carts provided by the authorities. “
The authorities have also provided numerous public privies, which are
daily cleaned by the public scavengers, and the contents of these pans and
pails add largely to the value of the refuse of the City of Edinburgh. From a
return made to the Corporation in 1874. I find that 41613 houses were examined,
of these 27294 had water-closets, and 14319 none. The latter raainly constitute
the worst part of the old town of Edinburgh. Some notion may he formed of
