WATER AND PUBLIC HEALTH.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 398, 16 August 1861, Page 4

WATER AND PUBLIC HEALTH.

Another communication on this important subject has been addressed to the Academy of Sciences by M. Grimaud de Caux, a gentleman who some months ago gave a very interesting description of the. system employed at Venice in the construction of cisterns.

In his present papers M. Grimaud de Caux makes some important remarks on the different effects produced by the emanations of saline and those of fresh water. Venice, for instance, lies,, as we know in the midst of salt lagoons, while the surrounding terra firma is marshy through the agency of fresh water, which the Venetian Republic had, by vast and costly hydraulic contrivances, carefully excluded from the lagoons. Now although this marshy soil is scarcely three miles from the city, which is. itself constantly immersed in the emanations from the lagoons, it is a fact that the ague is a very rare malady at Venice, while it is proverbially endemic in the adjoining marshes, and to such an extent that the Custom-house officers stationed at Fusine some years ago were entitled to a daily ration of quinine, at the charge of the Go-

vernment.

Hence it appears that while fresh water emanations relax the fibres of the human body without any other redeeming action, the emanations from salt water, although they have the same tendency to produce relaxation yet at the same time are pregnant with a corrective which neutralizes that effect.

M. Grimaud de Caux now proceeds to examine the cause of noxious exhalations in the dwellings of the humbler classes of Paris. In such dwellings there is generally a paved court, and a pump yielding spring water, which is of inferior quality to that which would be supplied by the city. The court, which is generally of less than moderate dimensions, receives all the foul water from the sinks, which is carried away by the gutters; and while the water which occasionally runs waste from the pump washes both court and gutters, it also filters between the paving stones, carrying with it some of the putrid particles which.it is supposed to wash away. The consequence is that in the course of a very short time all the ground becomes infected; if a stone be removed its bed is found to be black and feted; so that it is not surprising if its effluvia produce the same effect as the marshes round Venice.

To remedy this M. Giimaud de Caux recommends, first, the removal of all these pumps, as one of the causes of noxious infiltration; secondly, the suppression of the system of paving courts, which should be flagged with bitumen instead ; and thirdly, the distribution of good water at a cheap rate to these houses by the city.