In conclusion, let me refer my readers to a most exhaustive discussion, and very valuable information contained in the chapter entitled “Ventilation of Sewers and Drains” in Mr. Baldwin Latham’s ‘Sanitary Engineering,’ in which may be found almost everything that is at present known upon this important subject. [193] If there is any truth in the “germ theory” of disease, how dangerous must be the practice of open sewer ventilation, a waft of foul air from a sewer carrying with it a germ, and the unsuspecting passer-by is inoculated just as surely as if he had handled or been near the excrements of the diseased person whose evacuations have been passed into the public sewer. [194] The important city of Bristol has no system of sewer ventilation, and yet the death rate of the city, which is by no means specially healthily situated, has not been abnormally high up to this year (1883). [195] For further information upon my system for the annihilation of sewer gases, I must refer my readers to a pamphlet written by myself in 1880, entitled ‘Sewer Ventilation, or a New and Improved System for the disposal of the Noxious Gases generated in Sewers and Drains,’ and also to a paper I read on this subject at the meeting of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain, held in Exeter in the year 1881. CHAPTER XXIII. PUBLIC CONVENIENCES. In almost every town in the United Kingdom public urinals are now erected, although it is not often that good watercloset accommodation is provided, except at hotels and railway stations, over which the local authority have no jurisdiction; or perhaps if they do provide any accommodation of this description it is only in connection with the public parks or in the markets, museums, &c. The clause of the Public Health Act which empowers an urban authority to spend money out of the district rates for this purpose is as follows: “Any urban authority may if they think fit provide and maintain in proper and convenient situations, urinals, waterclosets, earthclosets, privies and ashpits and other similar conveniences for public accommodation” (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55, s. 39). It is not my intention to enter into the merits or otherwise of the many descriptions of urinals and latrines that have been brought to the notice from time to time of every town surveyor by enterprising manufacturers and patentees, but only to give a few suggestions upon the subject. Public urinals ought to be erected by the urban authority as a matter of convenience to the peripatetic portion of any community, and also to prevent nuisances being committed in improper places. In selecting sites for urinals the town surveyor must take care that after erection they shall not be offensive or a nuisance to any persons living in the vicinity, and that they shall be so placed that although they may be easily found, the persons using them shall be effectually screened.[196]