. The sanitation of cities. Hfe has, fromthe earhest times, been one of the problems ofcivihzation. As early as the ninth century beforeChrist, the Assyrians constructed a sewer to drainone of the palaces of Nimrod. The Romans, the great engineers of antiquity,devoted much attention to sanitation, in whichthey made steady progress up to the fall of theempire. The Cloaca Maxima, or Great Sewer, ofRome, constructed about the seventh century be-fore Christ, is still in use. With the advent of the dark ages, sanitary en-gineering went the way of learning in general, andall that the Romans had lear
. The sanitation of cities. Hfe has, fromthe earhest times, been one of the problems ofcivihzation. As early as the ninth century beforeChrist, the Assyrians constructed a sewer to drainone of the palaces of Nimrod. The Romans, the great engineers of antiquity,devoted much attention to sanitation, in whichthey made steady progress up to the fall of theempire. The Cloaca Maxima, or Great Sewer, ofRome, constructed about the seventh century be-fore Christ, is still in use. With the advent of the dark ages, sanitary en-gineering went the way of learning in general, andall that the Romans had learned seems to havebeen forgotten. Great cities grew up in Europe,entirely without provision for the disposal ofwaste matter, and in time inevitably became lit-erally buried in filth. Great plagues broke outagain and again, and swept like devastating fires 63 ^bc Sanitation of Cities over mediaeval Europe; cities became vast char-nel houses, and the accumulation of filth almostsurpasses human belief—yet it was not until the. LONDON, ENGLANDShowing boat for convejing sewage sludge to the North Seawhence it is discharged fifteenth century that faint interest began to bemanifested in the study of sanitation and notuntil well into the nineteenth that the subject be-gan to be understood. As late as 1847 JohnPhillips, one of the first engineers to make an of-ficial report on sanitary conditions in London,stated that conditions as he found them were sobad as to defy description. In 1848, 1849, and from 1852 to 1854, Londonwas devastated by cholera. In 1849, 14,600deaths were recorded; and in the latter half of1854, 10,675 deaths. The connection betweenthe rapid spread of the disease, and a contami- 64
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