Modern methods of sewage disposal : for towns, public institutions, and isolated houses / by Geo. E. Waring, Jr.

  • Waring, George E., Jr. (George Edwin), 1833-1898.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern methods of sewage disposal : for towns, public institutions, and isolated houses / by Geo. E. Waring, Jr. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    hygienic improvement. Even in Paris, where the purification of sewage is being carried out on a very large scale, and where its requirements are well under- stood, the use of the tinette filtre, which holds back the solid parts of house drainage until they putrefy, and then allows them to flow to the sewer, in this worst possible form, has within recent years been allowed to come into extensive use. At Newport the old rule still prevails largely, that house drainage shall be retained in cesspools until it can, after decomposition, overflow as a foul liquid into the public sewers. The fact is, that fsecal matter is of far less consequence than urine and the waste of the kitchen sink. Then, too, it was long thought that if sewage could be purged of its suspended matter, — of that which clouds it and colors it,— purification would be effected. An imperfect clarification by mechanical or chemical processes is still applied in some cases where a high degree of purification is really needed, although it is now well known that such clarification does not and cannot remove from sewage its most putrescible matters, nor its minute living organisms. Imperfect results, which have satisfied legal.requirements in Europe, are in such cases accepted as sufficient, in spite of a recog- nition of their incompleteness. The purification of sewage is surely on the eve of great extension in this country, and it is necessary to its success that the importance of making it as thorough as possible be made known, as well as its conditions and requirements. If the work is to be done at all, it