Hygiene: a manual of personal and public health (New Edition)Newsholme, Arthur, Sir
Science
Hygiene: a manual of personal and public health (New Edition)
Newsholme, Arthur, Sir
Hygiene; Public health -- Great Britain; Sanitation
=Cesspools= are only permissible in isolated country-houses supplied
with water-closets. They should always be situated a considerable
distance from the house, and should be emptied at regular intervals,
the sewage being placed in shallow trenches on the land.
The construction of the cesspool requires careful attention. Its walls
should be of brickwork set in cement, lined inside with cement, and
surrounded by clay puddle. The bottom should have a fall towards one
side, where a pump can be fixed, to remove the more liquid contents.
The depth of the cesspool should never exceed 7 feet. The drain
emptying into the cesspool should be trapped and ventilated, near
its junction with the cesspool; and the cesspool itself should be
ventilated.
In connection with many old houses in towns, cesspools still exist,
sometimes under the basement or near the house, and so built as
to allow soakage in every direction. The surrounding soil becomes
contaminated for a considerable distance, the water in any neighbouring
well is tainted, or leaky water-pipes receive the soakage. The
cleansing of cesspools is always a disgusting process, and even
dangerous to the workmen employed. They incur the risk of suffocation,
and are very subject to ophthalmia. To avoid these dangers a pump and
hose connected with a partially exhausted barrel is employed, but even
with this provision some nuisance arises. In the Bexley cart, which is
used for this purpose, a hose is used to connect the cesspool with an
air-tight cylinder in the cart, into which the contents of the cesspool
are pumped.
A modification of the cesspool system, called the =Pneumatic System=
has been proposed by Captain Liernur. In it the cesspool is not placed
under the house or the courtyard of the house, but under the street
at the angle of junction of several streets. It is made of cast-iron
and air-tight, and is connected with all the houses of several streets
by iron pipes. By means of a powerful air-pump worked by steam, the
cesspool is emptied into barrels in which it is sent directly to farms;
and the barrels being placed on ploughs of peculiar construction, the
manure is discharged from the bung-hole of each barrel and covered over
with earth in the progress of the plough. The pipes tend in this and
similar systems to get clogged with fæcal matter, and large quantities
of water are required to keep them clean, so that the system merges
into that of the use of water-closets, but without the thoroughness of
the latter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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