Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/614

596 The usual hasty charges of corruption and incompetence, it will be observed, and the usual expression of a belief that matters could be mended by turning the incumbent officers out of their places and putting green men in their stead!

Meanwhile the Council of Hygiene was busily at work tracing the source of these odors, and endeavoring to find means of suppressing them. The "Journal Officiel" of October 7, 1880, contains the report of a commission appointed for this duty, in which they take strong ground with regard to the harmlessness of the odors, so far as the public health is concerned. It has always been maintained by the Board of Health of this city that the odors complained of by our citizens were not detrimental to health, but only destructive of comfort, and its officers have been much ridiculed for this opinion. It is not unpleasant, therefore, to find that the corresponding board in Paris takes the same view. The following extract will show this:

"The commission deems it necessary, in the first place, to reassure the public with regard to the influence exercised by sewer emanations upon mortality and upon the diffusion of contagious or epidemic diseases. In a communication to the Academy of Medicine, March 6, 1877, M. Bouley has stated that the proof of this contagious action, far from being demonstrated, was contradicted by certain observations. This doctrine has been maintained in the Council of Hygiene, by MM. Bouchardat and Hillairet, whose authority in such matters is well known. The emanations from the mouths of sewers, as well as those from the great chimneys of our factories, do not contribute, in any degree whatever, to the development or propagation of epidemic affections."

In this report, the bad odors complained of in Paris, especially during August and September, penetrating to the center of the city, are attributed to the ventilating shafts of "fosses d'aisance," the dépôts des vidanges at Billancourt, Aubervilliers, and Les Hautes-Bornes, Arcueil. As remedies they recommend the prompt prosecution of persons who discharge night-soil into the sewers (which is not allowed in Paris, and accounts for the cleanliness of her sewers), the thorough flushing of the sewers, a vast increase in the water-supply for cesspools and water-closets, the ventilation of the sewers, and the strict supervision of fat-rendering establishments. And they add that, "in seeking these means of prevention, we do not lose sight of the just recommendation of the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, dated January 7, 1878, that they ought to be practicable and susceptible of being put in operation without entailing the suppression of the manufactures themselves." (Italics in original.)

The report lays great stress upon the facts that the odors from poudrette-works, fat-rendering establishments, fertilizer-works, etc., are not injurious to health, and that a suppression of these works, such as the public demands, would result in great inconvenience and even