Part 6

I see every day in the wards of the Fever Hospital the consequence of taking in such lodgers. An epidemic shows it not more truly, but more strikingly.

Within the walls of an establishment for pauper children at Tooting, in 1849, there were crowded 1395 children. Little more than one hundred cubic feet of breathing space was allowed for each child, 500 being the smallest compatible with safety. One night Cholera attacked sixty-four of these children; 300 were attacked in all. Within a week 180 perished.

In the Workhouse of Taunton there were 276 inmates. In some of the rooms the breathing space was not more than sixty-eight cubic feet. Cholera swept away 60 of these inhabitants in less than a week.

In the County Jail of this same town, the breathing space allowed to each prisoner ranges from 819 to 935 cubic feet. Not a single case of cholera, nor even of diarrhœa, occurred among the prisoners in this jail.

The town’s people also escaped, while in the overcrowded workhouses, 22 per cent. of the total number of the inhabitants were swept away.

In the village of East Farleigh, near Maidstone, 1000 persons were assembled for hop-picking. They were lodged in sheds, and had about eighty cubic feet for breathing space: in a few days diarrhœa became universal among them: ninety-seven were attacked with cholera, and forty-six died. In the same village, at the same time, under another employer who had provided proper accommodation for his labourers, there was a complete immunity from the epidemic.

I could add cases of the like kind without number. I could show that animals are affected by this cause of disease no less than men; that horses overcrowded in stables die of glanders; dogs in overcrowded kennels die of distemper; sheep overcrowded in ships, even during a short passage from one country to another, die in great numbers of febrile diseases: results which prove the operation of a general law of nature. I could adduce equally decisive examples of the action of each of the principal external predisposing causes just enumerated.

It has been often said that we cannot tell the difference between the air of the mountain-side and that of the crowded hospitals and fever-nests of towns. If it were so, it would be sufficient to say, Life is a more delicate test than Chemistry. But it is not so. The impurities in these pernicious places can be detected by chemical analysis, and examined as readily as the constituents of the atmosphere itself.

Footnote 5:

It has been alleged that the Cattle Plague owed its existence to these among perhaps other kindred causes, and human Epidemics have frequently been preceded or accompanied by a murrain among Cattle. See p. 7, and Boa Vista fever, pot. [ED.]

The moisture in the air of a crowded room may be condensed by ice. It condenses indeed spontaneously on the walls and windows, and on all surfaces, and may be collected in sufficient quantity for examination and experiment.

If a portion of this deposit be put on a piece of platinum and burnt, a strong odour of organic substance is given off, and a quantity of charcoal remains. If the deposit be allowed to stand for a few days, it forms a solid, thick, glutinous mass, having a strong odour of animal matter. If examined by a microscope, it is seen to undergo a remarkable change. First of all, it is converted into a vegetable growth, and this is followed by the production of multitudes of animalcules,—a decisive proof that it must contain organic matter, otherwise it could not nourish organic beings.

Footnote 6:

See the interesting experiments of Dr Angus Smith, on the Air and Water of Towns, “Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,” p. 16, et seq.

At every expiration the lungs pour a portion of organic matter into the surrounding atmosphere; at every moment the skin does the same. This matter is the dead portion of the body, which it is one of the special offices of these depurating organs to remove out of the living system as useless and pernicious.

It is indeed pernicious, for it is an animal poison, more concentrated in this than in any other form of excrementitious matter, since in other excretions the noxious particles, in their transmission out of the body, are diluted with other substances, but as they issue from the lungs and skin, they are in a great degree undiluted. Ventilation and cleanliness prevent this matter from accumulating, and render it innoxious. But it collects in large quantities on the furniture and walls of dirty houses, and is the main cause of the disagreeable smell of the rooms in which it abounds. In some instances the walls are coated with it. It was so in one particular building in which, during a local epidemic outbreak, twelve persons were attacked with cholera, and four died.

From recent chemical and microscopical examinations of the air of some crowded and filthy localities in the metropolis, it appears as a general result, that decomposing organic matter is always contained in such air,—the never-failing presence of animalcules testifying its existence, and their number and size indicating its amount.

Imagine the state of the atmosphere in the dormitories of the Tooting children: in the sixty-eight cubic feet of breathing space of the inmates of the Taunton Workhouse; in the eighty cubic feet of the Kentish hop-pickers; in the four corners and centre of the five-family room.

Conceive the state of the atmosphere in this room at night; all the members of the several families, collected; every breath of external air excluded; the windows, and perhaps even the chimney, carefully fastened up. This stagnant and poisoned air, breathed over and over again by every individual for seven or eight hours continuously; respiration, the special and admirable apparatus which nature has constructed for purifying the blood, thus made the very means of corrupting it. I have known from two to three cases of typhus produced nightly, for a fortnight together, in a room of this description, by sleeping in it for a single night! Can we wonder at the generation of typhus in such a room in ordinary seasons! Can we wonder at the spread and the havoc of an epidemic in it in epidemic seasons?

* * * * *

But besides the contamination of the air by external causes, it is conceived that the atmosphere itself undergoes natural changes which predispose it to the development and spread of epidemics. From time immemorial, the popular belief has been that such changes do take place, and that they manifest themselves by unmistakeable signs.

Among such signs may be reckoned,—a disturbance of the regular and ordinary condition of the atmosphere; an inversion of the seasons—summer in winter, and winter in summer; long-continued drought succeeded by torrents of rain, causing rivers to overflow, and the seed to rot in the earth; cloud, mist, fog, favouring excessive dampness, under the influence of which spring up inordinate growths of the lower species of plants, producing mouldiness, and the blood-spots, and other coloured vegetation that adhere to houses, and household furniture, and wearing apparel, and personal ornaments, and the person itself; under which also, fostered by a steadily elevated temperature, spring into being and activity, myriads of the lower tribes of animals—locusts, caterpillars, flies, frogs, covering the face of the earth, and devouring every green thing that the deluge of rain had left; and, as the sequence of these antecedent conditions, dearth and famine, closing the long series of the year’s calamities. Such, in all ages and countries, have been the recognized portents and precursors of a coming year of pestilence.

Footnote 7:

During the autumn following the extraordinary summer of 1865, and in which the Cattle Plague appeared, there was a very marked preponderance of insect life as compared with ordinary seasons. It is asserted by Mr Mc Dougall, of Manchester, that no case of this plague is known to have occurred where his disinfectant, which arrests decomposition, had been freely applied to and about the cattle. [ED.]

And there is truth in this.

It is quite certain that such atmospheric changes do take place, and prepare the way for pestilence. It is quite certain that there is an epidemic meteorology. This epidemic condition of the atmosphere is at length coming within the range of science. The first step towards this result, which promises to be of the highest practical value, we owe to the well-devised and patient observations of Mr Glashier, continued through the three recent Cholera epidemics.

Among other important facts, he has determined that there is—1. An increased pressure of the atmosphere, greatest at the worst period of the epidemic.

2. An increased density of the atmosphere, not arising from an increase of watery vapour; for,