Note 193 — Chapter XXII · VENTILATION OF SEWERS.
Reading edition
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.