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HOUSE-DRAINAGE. 13
lies actually within the four walls of the inhabited
house; the latter reared over it, as a bell-glass
over the beak of a retort, receiving and sucking up
incessantly the unspeakable abomination of its
volatile contents. In some such instances, where
the basement story of the house is tenanted, the
cesspool lies—perhaps merely boarded over—close
beneath the feet of a family of human beings,
whom it surrounds uninterruptedly, whether
they wake or sleep, with its fetid pollution and
poison.
Now, here is a removable cause of death.
These gases, which so many thousands of persons
are daily inhaling, do not, it is true, in their diluted
condition, suddenly extinguish life; but, though
different in concentration, they are identically the
same in nature with that confined sewer-gas which,
on a recent occasion, at Pimlico, killed those who
were exposed to it with the rapidity of a lightning
stroke. In their diluted state, as they rise from so
many cesspools, and taint the atmosphere of so
many houses, they form a climate the most congenial
for the multiplication of epidemic disorders,
and operate beyond all known influences of their
class in impairing the chances of life.
It may be taken as an axiom for the purposes
of sanitary improvement, that every individual cesspool
is hurtful to its vicinage; and it may hence be
inferred how great an injury is done to the public
health by their existence in such numbers, that