Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/202

 city which stand upon the banks of the Froom were liable to serious inundations, the effects of which were highly prejudicial to the inhabitants. These floods took place whenever there was a concurrence of the three following events:─a sudden dissolution of snow, a spring tide, and a south-west wind blowing up the Bristol Channel. Within the last few years it has been customary to empty the float twice annually, and a large sewer has been formed, which runs from the embouchure of the Froom in a direction parallel with the Float, and after receiving the drains from the central parts of the city, discharges itself into the new channel of the Avon. Into this sewer the Froom sends a division of its stream, loaded with the contributions which it has received at every step of its progress through some of the most closely built and densely crowded districts. Unhappily, the current of this river is narrow, torpid, and scanty, in consequence of which it often struggles ineffectually with the burthens accumulated upon it, and deposits them upon its bed, the sides of which become elevated into pillows for the exhausted and almost stagnant waters, and exhale miasms sufficient. it might be imagined, to infect the whole neighbourhood. In the summer time we have seen the stream shrunk to a width, scarcely exceeding that of a large gutter, and trickling between two mounds of mud. At all times it is almost impossible to cross the bridges by which it is concealed from sight in the midst of streets and lanes, without being reminded by particular odours, of its propinquity. Great and highly commendable pains have been taken by the proper authorities for the mitigation of this evil, and