very efficient for the same purpose, and do much to obviate malarial difficulties in low and marshy lands. It is more profitable to apply sewage, to green crops and root crops, and not to those which must flower and fructify before being

gathered.

In the neighborhood of Paris, the "dirty water" to the extent of ten million gallons a day, about one-sixth of the whole, is pumped upon a plot of land, 914 acres, at Glennevilliers. The disadvantages are very great. It is said to effect seriously the general healthfulness of the place, and destroyed the value of the land for building purposes. The agricultural product, however, has increased, and lands for culture maréchaire or market gardening command a higher price. But owing to the prejudice of the cultivators against employing the sewage of Paris, the article has been furnished for nothing, and the municipal authorities are glad to dispose of it so. Prof. William Crookes greatly disparages the "garden truck" thus produced at Glennevilliers. Giving evidence before Sir John Hawkshaw in 1875, he declared as follows: "The vegetables grew with the greatest luxuriance, but there was no firmness about them; for instance, I could thrust my finger right through the heart of a cabbage with the greatest ease, and if I took a vegetable, a cabbage or something of that sort, and broke it and squeezed the juice out, I could always detect a sewage smell in the juice. Some quick-growing rye-grass will take up actual sewage into circulation. You can break it and squeeze water out that has a decided smell of sewage."

Abundant other evidence confirms substantially the testimony of Prof. Crookes. It may be set down as the testimony of European experience that sewage cannot be employed as manure, except with limited advantage; and may not be relied upon as a source of public income. It can be made to do far more than ordinary irrigation can accomplish; but there are not sufficient data to determine any proximate results.

The earth will deodorize sewage and render it innocuous; bnt in rainy seasons will be too much saturated from the rainfall to be employed to advantage. In dry seasons the case is different. In the United States, it would seem, therefore,

that commonly the article might be employed with advantage and perhaps with profit. But even then, fecal matter must not be allowed with impunity to accumulate upon the surface of the ground, when there is not vegetation to make use of it. The nuisance would be intolerable, especially in hot weather; although I am decidedly of opinion that no typhoid disease would thus be engendered.

The difference of climate, the extreme droughts so common in the United States, tend to render it more possible to utilize the waste of cities and households, than is the case in Europe. But we have not yet learned the necessity in an agricultural point of view; and our people will require a course of education to last a generation or two before any system of sewagedisposal will be adopted at all adequate to the exigency. Meanwhile, our numerous cities want relief immediately.

The discharge of sewage into the sea, when this can be done, is the favorite way to get rid of the nuisance. The foreshore of many of our watering-places is polluted in this way; and the knowledge being certain to transpire, must lead to their abandonment as fashionable resorts. The sewage

having a higher temperature and a lower specific gravity than water, rises to the surface, and is carried and deposited wherever there is no tidal current; while elsewhere it is churned by the motion and decomposes, letting free the most offensive gases. Coming in contact with salt water, many of the matters are precipitated which would remain suspended in fresh water; and so gathering at the bottom near the shore, they form pestiferous banks of ooze. Hence, we may account for the unwholesomeness of seaside watering-places, where the sewage is poured down the beach into the sea in front of them. Sea-water delays the oxydation of organic matters, so that the foul constituents of sewage which might be liberated and got rid of in a short time if in river water, are preserved in sea-water, which causes them to accumulate and form dangerous deposits ready for the quickening action of the summer sun, when gases injurious to health are evolved.

In fine, it is necessary, in order to avoid the ill effects from improper disposal of sewage, to adopt some method

to arrest the putrefactive decomposition of the more solid portions. This may be done by constructing outfall sewers, with catchment-pits to enable the systematic removal of the solid matters. These should be carefully deodorized and disinfected, as well as punctually taken away. In this manner it can be used profitably as a fertilizer, with few of the objections of valuelessness that apply to sewage and sludge. I know that the first outlay for this will be costly, but it is the province of government to make ample provision for the future. The mere politician or party leader, like a savage or a Pompadour, may be content to bridge over to-day and leave to-morrow to adjust its own. But for such I am not writing. The importance of economising the water of our households so as to restore to the earth what is taken from it, cannot be too highly appreciated. Then to preserve our rivers and even the ocean itself from pollution is not only noble in conception, but a wise planning for those who come after us.

It would be better and far less expensive to devise plans, somehow after the analogy of the earth-closet, by which the night-soil and solid waste could be kept separate, and never permitted to mingle with the water of the sewers. Then the terrible evils of sewer-gas, the source of diphtheria, scarlatina, typhoid disease, etc., would be obviated at the outset; and it would be practicable to remove the more dangerous materials in an innocuous form, to proper places of deposit, deodorizing and disinfecting them with chemicals, and finally, restoring them to the ground as fertilizers.

Once set in the right track, the entire problem of sewagedisposal is easily adjusted. Our present methods are all objectionable, and can never be otherwise than prolific of peril to our population. The scourging of Memphis, Shreveport, New Orleans and other towns of the Southwest is a warning to be heeded for many years. We but temporize with the danger in our present sewerage; keeping away one form of pestilence perhaps, but nurturing epidemic in our own houses and precincts as certainly destructive. We need but a little forethought and an abundance of discretion and manly resolve. It is well to introduce rivers into our streets to refresh

and bless our population; and wise to carry it away by suitable drainage, not to saturate the earth with dampness and to fill our houses with malaria. But separate from it or keep from it all admixture of excrementitious matter, and we will escape a deadlier peril than that. Typhoid, however we name it, is gendered in our sewers, aud is a hundred-fold more dangerous. We have the power in our hands.

PUBLIC BATHS AS A PRECAUTION AGAINST

EPIDEMIC.

By J. M. HOLE, M. D., Salem, O.

We do not wish to be considered as a fault-finder in any matter connected with the protection of the people against the incursions of disease. We have, however, some suggestions to make that, to our mind, might with great propriety have been recommended as among the necessary adjuncts to a preventive system, to assure the community against epidemic invasion. We have been looking anxiously for some definite utterance from the National Board of Health upon this very important subject. But so far we have failed to see anything suggested by them, and we have really come to the conclusion that the members of that Board have, in a great measure, failed to comprehend the importance of Medical Hygiene; else they could not have so signally failed in recommending to the public one of the most potent and certain means of protection; one, too, that to our mind should be provided by the general government, or by municipal corporations for all the citizens.

The truth of this proposition is sufficiently evident when we consider that all industrial operations of entire cities and communities are often entirely suspended by the sudden invasion of epidemic disease. This has often been witnessed in our own as well as foreign countries, and especially in some of our Southern States where the ravages of yellow fever have been so destructive in the past few years. This single con

sideration alone is sufficient to justify almost any public expenditure that will improve the general health of the people. Indeed, it is a demand which every citizen has a right to make, that nothing be left undone by those who govern us to secure the health of the citizen.

The means available in the hands of the government for promoting the public health, are mainly preventive; the business of treating disease pertaining solely to the medical profession. Our National Board of Health seem to think and act as though the principal and more important means of the preservation of the health of our citizens was limited to quarantine laws, vaccination, the cleansing of sewers, and removing of garbage from streets and alleys. We heartily concur in regard to the latter expedients. But as to the two former, we think there has been too great value ascribed to them, and the benefits of both are much over-rated. All that is really known of medical science tends to establish this proposition: that whatever the cause of the disease may be, the most effective preventives are those which apply to the body only, irrespective of external circumstances, of climate, atmosphere, vicissitudes, miasmatic localities, contagium, etc.; and that if the body is properly guarded, the abodes of the most frightful and contagious diseases may be visited with comparative impunity. It is because the body is neglected that it does not better resist the morbific action of contagious external agents. We contend that in all public movements for the prevention of disease and the preservation of health, too much attention thus far, has been given relatively to mere external causes of disease, real or imaginary, and too little to the care of the human body-cleansing and purifying it from the accumulated obstructions from effete matter, and the filth with which it must unavoidably be constantly coming in contact from exposure to dirt through the atmosphere daily, and which adheres to all external and internal parts of the human body which are accessible to it.

The human body has in its external surface or skin about seven million openings or little tubes, which if placed lengthwise in continuous line, would amount to twenty-eight miles