Sewerage. Notwithstanding all this array of remonstrance against, and skilled objection to, the construction of the structure described for sewer purposes, the city council, being the legal masters of the situation, are steadily following out their original purposes, the sewer being, at the time of writing, probably completed. It remains to be seen whether the fears expressed concerning its unhealthfulness will be realized, something which can only be ascertained after considerable time has elapsed and after house connections have been generally made. It is to be hoped that the discussion of principles elicited by this occurrence may lead to more careful consideration of the problems of sewer construction in Green Bay and elsewhere, and that incidentally, whatever may be suffered in consequence of the faulty construction of this particular sewer, the general cause of sanitation may be advanced thereby -a hope which is the justification for referring to the matter at such length and with so much of detail. NOTE-The foregoing paper having been read to the State Board of Health, the following resolutions were adopted by a unanimous vote of that body. Resolved, That this Board having heard the foregoing paper, directs that the same be published in the next annual Report of the Board. Resolved, That in the opinion of the Board any sewer constructed on the principles upon which the Green Bay sewer, referred to in this paper, is constructed, is unfit for use for sewer purposes, and is a source of danger not only to those connecting with it, but also to the health of those living near it. Conditions of Health in Cities. CONDITIONS OF HEALTH IN CITIES. BY J. L. KAINE, MILWAUKEE. If certain men would only be considerate enough to die just when they ought, the progress of sanitary science in popular esteem would be more rapid. There are members. of the English parliament, for example, who live under the most insanitary conditions, and London barristers who are surrounded by the worst faults the sanitarian can imagine, and yet they are alive and well and even cheerful at 70. All about us are persons who ought, as a matter of conscience, to be decently dead and decomposed as a warning to all who neglect the laws of health, and yet they are perniciously alive and obtrusively well. There are persons who live in houses that are notoriously lacking in all proper sanitary arrangements, and yet they keep so well they are ashamed to look a doctor in the face. And, on the other hand, there are persons who make themselves a common nuisance by their attention to the laws of health, and yet they go off at a ridiculously early age, instead of living to be 90, as an evidence of the virtue of sanitation. These facts are obstacles in the way of scaring men into a respect for the young science. These are some of the reasons why men contemplate the spectre of sewer-gas with serenity, and refuse to be agitated by a chemist's report on the presence of disease germs in the drinking water. Because the science is young, it has many questions still in issue; and because there has been a considerable appearance of dogmatism in sanitary teaching, and some sharp disagreements, Conditions of Health in Cities. the average man will weary himself as little as possible with being virtuous in sanitary matters. Perhaps it is true that in this, more than any other science, theories have done more than absolute and established facts to determine principles. The theories may all be sound enough, but there is not demonstrable evidence enough in all cases to convince anybody who prefers to doubt and whose self-interest lies in doubting. Besides, people do not distinguish between capable public sanitarians and individual hygienic cranks. The field of personal hygiene is a clover field for cranks. There has never been a theory of personal hygiene advanced that has not been contradictory of some other theory, and foolish people, who practice whatever is preached, have a lively time of it-coming and going between new and old theories, like Mulligan's blanket which was forever going and coming between Mulligan and the pawnshop. Thus, after it is settled that one obtains fine ventilation by a fireplace, and after everybody has put in a fire place for health and æsthetic effect, a solemn person claiming to be an unmitigated scientific being comes along and tells us we are poisoning ourselves all along of our fire-places. "Because," says he, "the fresh air in the room seeks the floor, being cold, and the draught of the fire-place draws it up the chimney, rather than the warm, polluted air." He happens to be a humbug, but how are people to know a solemn humbug from serious persons of science? Nothing is certain in this world but bills, yet mankind is convinced that when a bullet strikes a man and he falls dead, there is a positive relation between the two facts. If we could see men drop dead after a whiff of sewer-gas, mankind would readily place sewer-gas and death in its relation of cause and effect. As it is, some fairly soundminded but very inconvenient persons take the liberty to be disagreeable by asking for more positive evidence than has Conditions of Health in Cities. yet been furnished that sewer-gas is poisonous. The sanitarians have no stock of instantaneous deaths to frighten people with, like the enthusiastic but somewhat confused anti-tobacco lecturer who told his hearers that a drop of nicotine on a dog's tail would kill a man. There are persons who maintain that living on the margin of an open city sewer is merely unpleasant to the pampered sense of smell and not at all deleterious to health, and that a little sewage in the drinking water is chiefly objectionable as an idea. There is a lack of unquestionable or at least unquestioned evidence such as sustains the principles of most other sciences. Of course there is no argument in the fact that some men live long and keep an appearance of health amid insanitary surroundings. There are men who drink an inordinate quantity of whisky and manage to live long and in apparent good health, yet nobody pretends to deny the pernicious and destructive influence of whisky on body and mind. A man's ability to resist destructive influences is determined largely by his physical inheritance. He may be able to withstand injurious agencies that would make short work of another. Two persons in the same apparent condition may be exposed to small-pox contagion in exactly the same way and one may escape the disease; but nobody is foolish enough to affirm that the disease of the other is not due to the exposure. And it is to be considered that there is a steady process of weeding out those who are not equal to resisting the bad conditions of living. The least fit go earlyone-tenth of all the children born into the world die during the first month. The process of weeding out the unfit goes on until only one in many tens of thousands of those born into the world reaches the age of three-score-and-ten, under which age nobody ought to die. The race constantly tends to accustom itself to its surroundings, and when the weak Conditions of Health in Cities. est have all been disposed of, those who remain may be considered tough. It is probable that in the course of ages, the race might adapt itself to constantly increasing hardships, and eventually be able to live in an atmosphere that would now be instantly fatal; but in acquiring the conditions necessary to such endurance, only a small fraction of each succeeding generation would be able to survive the increasing difficulties. This is, in fact, the case now--only a small fraction of those born into this world survive the present conditions of living, for any proper length of time. It is not established that sewer-gas, for example, is poisonous-no exhaustive and conclusive experiments have been made to that end. But there is a reasonable presumption, sustained by good evidence, amounting almost to a certainty and acceptable to the most intelligent men as conclusive, that it is poisonous. It is about as certain as anything can be without the most absolute proof, that typhoid fever and diphtheria owe their existence and virulence to filth. A man may be able to keep alive and in seemingly good health in an atmosphere tainted with sewer gas, but there is strong reason to believe that he will not be as much alive or in as actual health as if his air were pure. And there is strong reason to believe that persons with less power of resistence are either poisoned to death or into invalidism in varying degrees by the presence of sewer-gas; and that any person is made more susceptible to disease by breathing an air touched by the emanations from the sewers. There is no use asking why, if sewer gas is so generally found in city houses, we are not all dead. We are all dead-all except a small fraction. Compared with the number who come into the world, the number of persons who live as long as men ought to live is ridiculously small. As a rule, we are all dead before 70. In laying down the rules of living, sanitary science does not pretend to say that every man who |