Page:The present and general condition of sanitary science.djvu/14

8 thousand, with an increased value of thirty per cent. for civil work after three years of military service. We have not yet attained to that increased value of labour, although I have been informed of the value of the labour of the volunteers being increased by five shillings a week by the aptitude imparted by the drill. The foremost sanitation of the German army is largely advanced by a factor which is new to us, but which is extensively available for the civil as well as the military population. Mr. David Grove, the eminent sanitary engineer of Berlin, applied a means of washing constantly half a million of soldiers, with tepid water, at the cost of a shilling for every 100 men. But I find that we now improve upon that sanitation, and can effect it better for ninepence per 100 men. Now also in our schools and district institutions about ten children can be washed with tepid water for about a penny, soap and towel included, at a rate of time of three minutes per head—much more cheaply and effectually than they can be washed at home. Trained nurses devoted to the care of patients with the most infectious diseases have long protected themselves by a double washing, head to foot, daily, with tepid water and a change of clothes; and experienced sanitary officers use the same precautions on the occurrence of extraordinary visitations of epidemics. Populations may now be trained to do the same.

Let me state one large gain in sanitation, which I now believe to be attainable for the satisfactory ventilation of public buildings, and of large schools and workshops.

I have for a long time collected observations of the height of attacks of epidemics on the population of tall buildings, and have found the attacks to be generally confined to the cellar dwellings or the lower floors, whilst the occupants of the upper floors have been distinctly exempted from them, that is to say, the occupants of dwellings above the range of the visible fogs, made up of the heavier, low-lying, and visible fogs. Mr. Glaisher, the experienced aeronaut, gives me his testimony that the visible fogs are low and close lying to the land. From the height at Highgate or Hampstead, fogs are seen covering London like a level white blanket, out of which the upper and bright portion of the dome of St. Paul's Cahedral [sic] is seen bright and clear above it. By tubular arrangements (largely