Disinfection of Privy Vaults. 41 the addition of chlorine, ferreous sulphate (green copperas), sulphate of zinc, and sulphate of iron, or what is largely used by the New York Disinfecting Corps, a mixture of dead oil and copperas (impure carbolic acid and protosulphate of iron)—(Buck. II, 413); and the well then filled up completely with dry earth, well rammed down; the mouth of the well should then be bricked over with good lime and soorkee mortar and well-burnt bricks. Whatever disinfectant is used, it must be freely employed, at least a pint of strong solution to each cubic foot of the contents of the well-privy. Fecal matters should be regularly and carefully removed from privies daily, unless the pail system, known in France and England as the Systeme Goux, be adopted, in which case removal every sixth or seventh day will be sufficient, except in cases where there is cholera or enteric fever in the house, when the excreta should be disinfected and removed daily. Privies and privy vaults should be regularly whitewashed with fresh lime and chloride of lime, or Macdougall's powder sprinkled on the floors, seats, and drains. After the occurrence of cases of disease, they should be further disinfected, by burning a small quantity of sulphur in the lower vault. Whether the daily cleansing or the six-day pail system be in force, constant supervision and inspection is necessary to ensure regularity and thoroughness of cleansing. Native householders cannot be depended upon to bring to notice in due time neglect on the part of the nightmen, though they are ready enough, at least the educated portion of them, to rush into print and ventilate real or imaginary grievances in the columns of the English and vernacular papers. Graveyards, especially those used by Mahomedans for the burial of their dead, are fruitful sources of the evolution of noxious gases, such as carbonic acid, phosphoretted hydrogen, ammonia, and sulphuretted hydrogen; and are distinctly inimical to health. Dr. Wilson says:-" According to the evidence summed up in the Report on Extramural Sepulture in 1850, the vapours given off from thickly-crowded graveyards, if not actually productive of disease, do certainly tend to increase the sick and death-rate of the immediate neighbourhood.” It would be idle and presumptuous for me to attempt to prove what the effects of effluvia from putrescent animal matter are on healthy subjects; the offensiveness of smell is itself evidence of its deleteriousness. If then the evil is admitted and legislated for in Europe, where bodies are encased in coffins, and buried at a considerable depth, how much greater must be the mischief in this country, when we have bodies merely wrapped in a cloth and placed frequently barely three feet underground, and Putrefaction Defined. 43 where the earth-covering is again greatly reduced in thickness by the Mahomedan practice of placing a platform over the corpse;-and this in a country subject to the intense heat and heavy rains of the Tropics. Here there is not time for that slow decay of " the poor remnants of mortality," by which the elements of organic matter are slowly oxidated or united to the oxygen of the air. On the contrary, the decay passes quickly into putrefaction, and putrid smells, with all their attendant evils, arise from the grave and vitiate the atmosphere/ And here it will not be out of place if we consider what is putrefaction. Tidy defines it to be "a spontaneous change common to all nitrogenised organic bodies when exposed to the air, whereby they are resolved into new and simpler products. The action is accompanied by the evolution of unpleasant gases, which are, for the most part, compounds of sulphur and phosphorus. It differs from fermentation in that unpleasant products are evolved, as e. g., in the decomposition of a dead body. Moreover, a putresciable body is always a nitrogenised body, which, at a certain temperature, in contact with air and moisture, decomposes, and then becomes capable of acting as a ferment. "Moreover, like fermentation, putrefaction is always accompanied by the development of certain minute living organisms, fungi, and infusoria.” The conditions necessary to putrefaction are air, moisture, and warmth. The presence of the first isnecessary only at the commencement of the process. When putrefaction has once fairly commenced, it continues independently. A perfectly dry body does not putrefy. This is exemplified by the curious dried Indian 44 Danger of Urban Cemeteries. corpses found in large earthenware jars, near Campos, in the Brazils, and by the dead monks at Malta. Warmth destroys cohesion, and thus aids putrefaction. It will thus be seen that all the elements necessary for rapid decomposition are in full force in a graveyard in this country. The following are the opinions of some well-known Indian medical authorities on this subject : Dr. James Anderson, late Presidency Surgeon, Calcutta, says:-"Native cemeteries situated in the midst of a populous neighbourhood, must be most objectionable not only from the carelessness with which the dead are covered up, and the frequent exposure of the corpse by the inroads of jackals; but also from the greater virulence of effluvia arising from putrid or decayed animal matter when disseminated in a hot moist atmosphere, at all seasons more or less mixed with the emanations from decomposed vegetable matter." Dr. Anderson gives an instance, which had come under his own observation, of direct injury arising from the incautious inhaling of the foul vapours arising from a putrefying corpse : "The son of Mr. L'Estrange, the apothecary of the Presidency General Hospital, then a pupil at La Martiniere, wandered into this cemetery (Kasia Bagaun, south of Camac Street), and having approached a grave which had been invaded by jackals, was nauseated by the effluvia therefrom, and hurried home, complaining of sickness, and with a violent headache. He was attacked the same night with low typhoid fever, and though he recovered after a long and painful illness, his life was for some time despaired of." Another curious but well authenticated case is, quoted by Dr. Johnson (Influence of Tropical Climates) :— An American merchant ship was lying at anchor in Wampoa Roads, 16 miles from Canton. One of her crew died of dysentery, and was taken on shore to be buried. No disease of any kind had occurred on board during the voyage. Four men accompanied the corpse, and two of them set to work to dig a grave. Unfortunately they hit upon a spot, where a body had been buried about two or three months previously (as was afterwards ascertained). The instant the spade went through the lid of the coffin, a most dreadful effluvium issued forth, and the two men fell down nearly lifeless. It was with difficulty that their companions could approach near enough to drag them from the spot and fill up the place with earth. The two men affected were taken with some difficulty on board. They were attended to by the Surgeon of an English East Indiamen, but in spite of every care one died on the evening of the fourth day, the other on the fifth; both the other men suffered from similar symptoms, one of them being for three weeks unfit for duty. I need not quote at length the medical history of these cases as given by Dr. Johnson; but the disease appears to have been a very malignant typhoid fever, accompanied with suppurating buboes and other complications. The men were attended, and the post mortem examination conducted, by Dr. Hamilton of H. B. M. S. Britomart. Dr. Norman Chevers, speaking of an old Mahomedan burial-ground in the immediate vicinity of Calcutta, says:" It is scarcely possible that a burial place so large and so saturated with decaying animal matter can, in a tropical climate, be otherwise than offensive and dangerous to the inhabitants of its near vicinity. It is self-evident that the prevailing mode of burial in shallow graves, lightly filled in and ill-covered, must be attended |