Volume 2

First report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire whether any and what special means may be requisite for the improvement of the health of the metropolis, with minutes of evidence.

  • Great Britain. Metropolitan Sanitary Commission.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire whether any and what special means may be requisite for the improvement of the health of the metropolis, with minutes of evidence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    ]0S Bad effects of Sulphuretted Hydrogen. No o. jn thg pnicti of t us. ,u ecauti£)n SfK' ^ tuv6tS hyd,TCh6miCal —^ 1 -d to reS that daily exposure to it m minute quantity, caused in a few weeks an extraordinary lassitude, languor of the pulse, and defective appetite S rohmeyerin the like circumstances, was liable to severe headache. Mr. Taylor says that the workmen in the Thames Tunnel, suffered severely for some time from a similar exposure : many of them became affected with giddiness, sickness, general debility, and emaciation, then wUh a low fever attended with delirium, and in the course of a few months several died. No cause could be discovered fur their illness exceptthe frequent escape of sulphuretted hydrogen from the roof, lhe affection only disappeared when the communication from bank to bank was completed, so that the tunnel could be thoroughly ventilated. Subsequently at p. 810, Dr. Christison relates that in August, lbdl, 22 boys living at a boarding-school at Clapham, were seized in the course of three or four hours with alarming symptoms of violent irritation in the stomach and bowels, subsultus of the muscles of the arms, and excesswe prostration of strength. Another had been similarly attacked three days before: this child died in 25, and one of the others in 23 hours. On examination after death, the Peyerian glands of the intes- tines were found in the former case enlarged, and as it were, tuber- culated ; in the other there were also ulcers of the mucous coat of the small intestines, and softening of that coat in the colon. A suspicion of accidental poisoning having naturally arisen, the various utensils and articles of food used by the family were examined, but without success. And the only circumstance which appeared to explain the accident was, that two days before the first child took ill, a foul cess- pool had been opened, and the materials diffused over a garden adjoin- ing to the children's play-ground. This was considered a sufficient cause of the disease by Dr. Spurgin and Messrs. Angus and Saunders of Clapham, as well as by Drs. Latham and Chambers, and Mr. Pearson of London, who personally examined the whole particulars. My own observations would induce me to concur in the explanation thus given, it is, however, proper to add the conclusion of the paragraph, in which Dr. Christison observes, that Their explanation may be the only rational account that can be given of the matter; but as no detail of their chemical inquiries was ever published, their opinion cannot be received with confidence by the medical jurist and the physician, since it is not supported by any previous accounts of the effect of hydro- sulphuric acid gas, (sulphuretted hydrogen). Whether the disease in question arose from the evolution of sulphuretted hydrogen alone, or, as is most probable, from a combination of several deleterious gases, still as a case of disease evidently produced from foetid exhalations arising from the emptying of a cesspool, it presents so much matter of interesting consideration that I hope to be allowed to place before the Commissioners the reply of Dr. Spurgin to inquiries made by myself in reference (hereto. Copy of Dr. Spurgin's Letter. My Dear Dr. Leeson, Tiieue arc some inaccuracies in Dr. Christison's report, to wit, the date of the occurrence was in August, 1829, not 1831. The first child 1 was called to was seized with violent abdominal pains, on the night of Thursday the 13th of August, accom-