quite conclusive. The volumes of the Health of Towns
Report teem with instances of the mischief of insufficient ventilation.
It is one body of facts moving in one uniform direction. Dr. Guy noticed
that, in a building where there was a communication between the stories,
disease increased in regular gradations, floor by floor, as the air was
more and more vitiated, the employment of the men being the same. But it
is needless to quote instances of what is so evident. With respect to
the remedies, these are as simple as the evils to be cured are great.
For instance, there was a lodging house in Glasgow where fever resided;
"but by making an opening from the top of each room, through a channel of
communication to an air pump, common to all the channels, the disease
disappeared altogether." Other modes of ventilation are suggested in the
Report; and one very simple device introduced by Mr. Toynbee, a
perforated zinc plate fixed in the window-pane furthest from the fire or
the bed, has been found of signal benefit. I shall take another
opportunity of saying more upon the subject of ventilation. Of all the
sanitary remedies, it is the most in our power. And I am inclined to
believe that half per cent. of the annual outlay of London, that is ten
shillings in every hundred pounds, spent only for one year in
improvements connected with ventilation, would diminish the sickness of
London by one fourth.

2. SEWERAGE.

Melancholy as the state of this department is shown to be; destructive
annually, I fear, of thousands of lives; it is almost impossible not to
be amused at the grotesque absurdity with which it has been managed. One
can imagine how Swift might have introduced the subject in Grildrig's
conversations with the King of Brobdingnag. "The King asked me more
about our 'dots' of houses, as his Majesty was pleased to call them; and
how we removed the scum and filth from those little 'ant-heaps' which we
called great towns. I answered that our custom was to have a long brick
tube, which we called a sewer, in the middle of our streets, where we
kept a sufficient supply of filth till it fermented, and the foul air was
then distributed by gratings at short intervals all over the town. {202}
I also told his Majesty, that to superintend these tubes, we chose men
not from any particular knowledge of the subject, which was extremely
difficult, but impartially, as one may say; and that the opinions of
these men were fin