If the adage I have quoted above be true--namely, that we must not act contrary to nature--there is another of the truth of which we feel more assured. It is this: whenever man interferes with nature, he must take the whole matter on himself, and be prepared to meet every contingency. Nature gave us streams and rivers more or less pure, whose banks are more or less salubrious. If man pours into these streams and rivers the refuse of towns and cities, he must be prepared to meet the result of the experiment. It may be good--it may be bad to him: this he cannot know beforehand; but reason tells him that the experiment is likely to prove injurious. It may be less injurious than burying the excreta in cesspools under his house, or court, or garden;[35] but this I doubt. In the meantime, how does civilized man protect himself from a source of disease respecting which there never was a doubt--the natural humidity of the soil on which he has erected his dwelling, in which he sleeps and lives? To meet this evil he forms surface drains around his house and garden and court. Into these collect the humidity natural to the soil, as well as rains of heaven. These drains, adulterated by no intermixture with the refuse of house and stables, terminate in the nearest streams, and serve to maintain these streams and rivers into which they flow at their natural standard. [35] The Registrar-General consoles the inhabitants of London on the relative amount of injury, being in favour of the plan of polluting the Thames rather than of gradually abolishing cesspools. Thus, before it was discovered that the best way of dealing with these difficult questions was to break down the distinction between drain and sewer (thus poisoning, probably for all time to come, the air of towns and cities), construct a sewer which soon becomes a cloaca to receive all, and in open day and above ground throw the contents into the nearest stream--imitating old Rome, without knowing anything of Rome’s municipal economy, our forefathers drew a marked and clear distinction--1st, between drain and sewer; 2nd, between a cesspool and a dead-well; 3rd, between the excreta of man, which they knew to be offensive, and that of animals, which all were well aware are innoxious: the latter they restored to the fields, the former they disposed of as best they could. Society, having rejected in this instance the experience of their forefathers, enters now on a new phasis. Nature, about which they talk so much, will not suffer them to rest half way. Bad odours pervade the streets, courts, and houses: rivers can scarcely be approached. Chemists affirm that that which is thrown into the sea should be returned to the land. It is this question, in so far as it bears on the matter discussed in this chapter, I shall now briefly discuss.