A History of Science — Volume 5Williams, Henry Smith
History
A History of Science — Volume 5
Williams, Henry Smith
Science -- History
The same thing is true of various other features of the subjects
represented. Thus there is a very elaborate model here exhibited of the
famous Berlin system of sewage-disposal. As is well known, the essential
features of this system consist of the drainage of sewage into local
reservoirs, from which it is forced by pumps, natural drainage not
sufficing, to distant fields, where it is distributed through tile pipes
laid in a network about a yard beneath the surface of the soil. The
fields themselves, thus rendered fertile by the waste products of the
city, are cultivated, and yield a rich harvest of vegetables and grains
of every variety suitable to the climate. The visitor to this field
sees only rich farms and market-gardens under ordinary process of
cultivation. The system of pipes by which the land is fertilized is
as fully hidden from his view as are, for example, the tributary
sewage-pipes beneath the city pavements. The average visitor to Berlin
knows nothing, of course, about one or the other, and goes away, as he
came, ignorant of the important fact that Berlin has reached a better
solution of the great sewage problem than has been attained by any
other large city. Such, at least, is likely to be the case unless the
sight-seer chance to pay a visit to the Museum of Hygiene, in which
case a few minutes' inspection of the model there will make the matter
entirely clear to him. It is to be regretted that the authorities
of other large cities do not make special visits to Berlin for this
purpose; though it should be added that some of them have done so, and
that the Berlin system of "canalization" has been adopted in various
places in America. But many others might wisely follow their example,
notably the Parisians, whose sewerage system, despite the boasted
exhibition canal-sewer, is, like so many other things Parisian, of the
most primitive character and a reproach to present-day civilization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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