Treatment and Utilisation of Sewage

Abstract

OF late years, discussions about sewage have occupied a large share of the proceedings of many of the Societies concerned with the practical application of science, and recent scientific discoveries have as yet done little to modify the conclusions of the last ten or fifteen years. Dr. Farr's Report on Vital Statistics proves that increased density of population (if sanitary conditions remain constant) is itself a cause of increased ill-health and death, which can only be counteracted by increased precaution. And the prominent position occupied by England in sanitation must be ascribed to the constant efforts which have been made to cope with the increasing density of the population. A danger to health arises from density of population mainly because of the retention in our midst of the impurities which are the necessary accompaniments of the act of living, that is to say, the retention of those substances which putrefy, and from the products of the putrefaction of which various matters, or, it may be, organisms, inimical to life, become disseminated through the air.

Treatment and Utilisation of Sewage.

By W. H. Corfield. (Oxon.). Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged by the Author and Louis C. Parkes, M.D., Cert. Public Health (Lond.). (London: Macmillan and Co., 1887.)