Bad Drains

“Bad Drains.” How often has this term been used during the last few years? By the medical profession alone, thousands of cases have been attributed to this cause. To the honour and credit of that profession its members have thought out and worked out the cause of innumerable cases of disease under their charge, and rightly fixed their origin to be due to “bad drains.”

In many cases it has been but a fashionable term to describe cases which had the appearance of gas poisoning, but did not owe their origin to drains; but rather to the heated and impure atmosphere of rooms, late hours, and the sudden change from heat to cold. If there have been a few hundred cases where “bad drains” were supposed to have caused the illness and such was not the case, there have been thousands of others where the disease originated from them, but was taken as a matter of course, or as one of the frailties of the human frame, when undoubtedly the cause was “bad drains.”

It is a most remarkable thing, that whilst on the one hand we have the medical profession energetically working to find out defects in the planning of drains and sanitary fittings, and writing articles on them, we have on the other hand surveyors and others who have treated the matter as a doctor’s fad.

During the last five years scarcely a medical conference has been held without the question of “bad drains” forming one of the principal subjects discussed. Medical officers of health have made stirring speeches and reports to Local Boards; but where is the surveyor who has had the energy to do the same unless it has been actually forced upon him? It is a curious but noteworthy fact, that nearly the whole of the evils of badly constructed drains, and the principal improvements in them, have been forced on surveyors, builders, and plumbers by the medical profession and the public.

The reticence shown by surveyors in dealing with “bad drains” may be attributed to their unwillingness to acknowledge the errors and defects in works already executed. These works were, at the time, executed according to the theories adopted by the most eminent engineers in the profession, and it would be considered unprofessional to admit errors.

There is scarcely a district (excepting where drains have been laid within the last three years) where the branch drains are trapped into the main sewers with an efficient water-seal. Surveyors feel that to acknowledge this would be tantamount to acknowledging a want of professional knowledge or neglect of duty on their part.

Now, strictly speaking, this could not be the case, and a surveyor (placed in such a position where he knows that there are defects in his drainage system, and probably these errors were made by himself,) could say that these now known defects were not previously known by the most eminent engineers, and especially with regard to sewer-gas, its treatment, and action on the public health. Boldly facing the matter and advocating that the drainage under his charge should be so perfected that no medical man could point to it as being detrimental to health, if it entailed an unusual expenditure, coming from the surveyor he would carry the Board with him, and in doing so would make his position at the Board doubly secure.

To prove this we have only to refer to reports made by engineers during the last fifteen years on drainage schemes, compare the results of the theories laid down, and note the instances in which they have failed, especially those in connection with sewage farms and the ventilation of sewers.