TO 
PREYE'NT 
FLOODS IN BALTIMORE, 
USE ALL THE WATER IN 
JONES FALLS 
FOR CITY PURPOSES. 
BALTIMORE : 
J. P. DES FORGES. 
1871. (fo prevent floods in jj§ntiimore. 
The following Article, on the condition of the Basin, is from the 
Baltimore Sun of August 2bth, 1871 : 
THE DIFFICULTY WITH THE BASIN. 
The causes of the offensive stench which is wafted 
from the head of the basin at this time by every south- 
ern breeze, and which has within the past few days be- 
come so exceedingly obnoxious as to be a subject of gen- 
eral comment, are well enough understood to indicate 
what measures may be necessary to remedy the evil. 
It is well known that accumulations of filth and decayed 
matter have been gathering into the basin the entire 
distance from Light street wharf down to the mouth of 
Jones Falls during the greater part of the last century. 
It is true the city dredging machines are keptvconstantly 
employed, but only in cleaning out the docks and the 
entrances thereto, whilst the basin proper is left to take 
care of itself. It is said that the demands of commerce 
have become so great now that the egress and ingress 
of the large fleet of vessels that load and unload in the 
upper harbor would be too greatly interfered with by 
the use of the mud machines in cleaning out the harbor. 4 
The basin, as is well known, is comparatively a pool of 
stagnant water, with no current whatever. The filling 
up process has been greatly accelerated of late years by. 
the accumulation of fruit and oyster packing houses in 
the vicinity, the waste and offal from which find their 
way into the basin, until at the present time there is, it 
is estimated by those who have every opportunity of 
knowing, an average of several feet of thick black mud 
covering the original fine gravelly bottom o-f the basin. 
Formerly this mud, formed by every description of de- 
cayed vegetable matter, calculated to spread the seeds 
of sickness and death, was only stirred up by the keels 
of vessels at very low tide, but like all nuisances that 
are permitted to go unabated, the mud seems to have got 
the upper hand of the authorities, and now, without re- 
gard to the state of the tide, it is stirred up on all oc- 
casions. A remedy for the evil was warmly recom- 
mended by Captain John TI. Cooper, the Port Warden, 
in his last annual report to the Mayor and City Council, 
which was deemed practicable by many. He recom- 
mends the laying of iron pipes of large capacity across 
the land from the south branch of the Patapsco, at the 
Spring Gardens, with branch pipes emptying into the 
basin at numerous points along Light street wharf. Of 
course steam machinery would be requisite, in the opin- 
ion of Captain Cooper would form a lift to the water to 
the proper height. This current of fresh and pure water 
which would drive the accumulations of mud in the basin 
down to the bar at the mouth of the Falls, where the 5 
mud could easily be taken up by the mud machines 
without in the least interfering with commerce. It is 
a well-known fact that below the mouth of the Falls no 
effluvia arises from the water, no matter how low the 
tide may be, as the current from the Falls, whenever 
there are rains, drives all the mud and dirt over on the 
bar at the opposite side of the harbor, from whence it is 
taken up by the city machines. At all events, the rem- 
edy suggested by Captain Cooper would perhaps not be 
a very expensive one, and as a sanitary measure might 
be well worthy the attention of the authorities, to say 
nothing of the advantages of deeper water in that por- 
tion of the harbor. 
TO THE EDITORS OF THE SUN. 
Gentlemen : I make your article in The Sun of the 
25th instant on the state of the basin the basis of what 
I am about to write. The consideration of this subject 
in connection with the Jones Falls improvement, 
strikes me as important. May not the flushing of the 
basin above the mouth of Jones Falls be affected with 
the water of that stream ? The experience of the pre- 
sent season is that the water which is husbanded upon 
that stream is barely sufficient for the use of the in- 
habitants of the city at this season of the year. Very 
soon some additional measure will have to be taken for 6 
the adequate supply of water for our rapidly growing 
population. The Jones Falls water has been found to 
be decidedly superior to that of the Gunpowder, on ac- 
count of its containing a sufficient quantity of lime so 
to coat the lead pipes as to render lead-poison quite 
out of the question. Not so with the Gunpowder wa- 
ter. This, then, turns us to Jones Falls as the source 
for a further supply of water to the fullest extent that 
this stream may be able to furnish. We are now 
about to expend millions to keep the surplus water of 
Jones Falls from drowning out our city. 
In view of copiously flushing out the basin and fur- 
nishing large additional water for domestic purposes, 
and at the same time preventing floods in Jones Falls, 
I suggest that all the water furnished by this stream 
should be retained somewhere between the outskirts of 
the city and the head waters of the stream, in dams or 
lakes constructed for the purpose, at suitable points. 
This may include the extraordinary freshets of water 
so much dreaded by our citizens. These freshets are 
formidable, not so much on account of the quantity of 
water that passes through our city as the result of any 
one rain storm, as it is on account of the short space of 
time in which it passes ; therefore these extraordinary 
floods do not increase the difficulty of retaining it in 
lakes outside of the city. That it is possible to retain 
and control the entire waters of Jones Falls throughout 
the year, none will deny. The practical question is 
whether the expense of so doing will be warranted, in 7 
view of a large additional supply of water for domestic 
purposes, the driving of the mud out of the basin, and 
relieving all apprehensions of floods. 
ROSS WINANS. 
TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE. 
Considerations of economy and utility combined will 
dictate at no distant day, that all the water of Jones 
Falls be availed of for city purposes. Even now the 
best interests of the city would be served, by taking 
immediate measures to store up and control the entire 
waters of this stream. The number of families having 
and using baths in their houses, should be increased 
many fold, and the ready means of bathing should be 
furnished by the city authorities, for all who do not 
avail of private baths. The present supply of water 
for city use, is totally inadequate for this additional 
demand. This, together with the large amount of 
water that could be most advantageously used for 
cleansing the harbor and other portions of the city, 
would consume the entire waters flowing through the 
valley of Jones Falls, leaving none to be conducted 
around the city, or to be spread out in our midst, arid 
thereby furnish an increased area of surface for the 
emission of poisonous gases or to create floods. In 
European countries the laboring classes practice bath- 8 
ing much more than here. The people of countries in 
which the bath is habitually used, anxiously seek it in 
full confidence of its salutary effects in affording longev- 
ity and vigorous health. To be surrounded with a pure 
and not over damp atmosphere, and to be clean in per- 
son, is of the utmost importance to health, comfort, 
activity of body and mind, buoyancy of spirit and 
long life. 
I extract the following on the subject of bathing, from 
Chambers’s Miscellany: 
Bathing.—“Here we arrive at the great and almost 
universally recognized engine of personal purification. 
Entire immersion of the body in a bath of tepid or 
warm water, is unquestionably the most effectual means 
of cleansing the skin from its natural or artificial 
impurities.’’ 
“According to the Jewish dispensation, certain ob- 
servances to insure personal cleanliness were the sub- 
ject of religious injunction, and for a similar reason 
Mahommedans, in eastern countries, have been enjoined 
to perform ablutions at stated times and seasons. In 
these Oriental countries, and also in Russia, the use of 
the warm bath is universal among the richer classes, 
and the public establishments for bathing are, in some 
places, on a scale of great splendor. Inattention to 
cleanliness of apparel seems to render these ablutions 
indispensable for personal comfort.” 
Public Baths—“The mass of the people having neither 
the means to purchase, nor the convenience for using 9 
private baths, must, of course, resort to public ones, and 
for their accommodation, therefore, every town ought to 
possess one or more establishments fitted up with all 
proper conveniences for bathing. In this respect, not- 
withstanding our wealth, our boasted civilization and 
mechanical skill, we fall infinitely short of the Greeks 
and Romans, who had not only their domestic, but their 
public baths, in which the poorest citizen might lave.’’ 
“I hardly know any act of benevolence more essential 
to- the comfort of the community, than that of establish- 
ing, by public benefaction, the use of baths for the labor- 
ing classes, in each of our cities and manufacturing towns. 
The lives of many might be saved by them. Throughout 
the vast empire of Russia, through all Finland, Lapland, 
Sweden and Norway, there is no cottage so poor, no 
hut so destitute, but it possesses its vapor bath, in which 
all its inhabitants, every Saturday at least, and every 
day, in cases of sickness, experience comfort and salu- 
brity. Among the ancients, baths were public edifices, 
under the immediate inspection of the government. 
They were considered as institutions which owred their 
origin to absolute necessity as well as to decency and 
cleanliness.’' 
Pure air, cleanliness and sunshine are the great an- 
tagonists of cholera. Dr. Hall, of Hall’s Journal of 
Health, says : “It does not require large aggregations 
of impurity for the developments of disease. A 
neglected sewer, ashpit or cesspool, an unsound soil 
pipe may be ail that is required.” Instance, the Na- 
tional Hotel disease. 10 
Sir James Wylie, late physician to the Emperor of 
Russia, attentively studied the effects of light as a 
curative agent in the hospitals of St. Petersburg; and 
he discovered that the number of patients who were 
cured in rooms properly lighted, was four times greater 
than of those confined in dark rooms. This led to a 
complete reform in lighting the hospitals of Russia, and 
with the most beneficial results. In all cities visited 
by the cholera, it was universally found that the great- 
est number of deaths took place in narrow streets, and 
on the sides of those having a northern exposure where 
the salutary beams of the sun were excluded. 
“The following fact,” says a good authority, “has 
been established by careful observation : That where 
sunlight penetrates all the rooms of a dwelling, the in- 
mates are less liable to sickness, than in a house where 
the apartments lose its health-invigorating influences. 
Basement rooms are the nurseries of indisposition.” 
In continuation of the same subject, that beautiful 
and lovable character, Florence Nightingale, observes, 
“a dark house is almost always unhealthy, always an 
ill-aired house. Want of light stops growth, and 
promotes scrofula, rickets, (fee., among the children. 
People lose their health in a dark house and if they 
get ill, they cannot get well again in it.” 
We find in Ranking’s Abstract a sensible article on 
this subject, by Mr. Grainger, from which we extract the 
following paragraph : “The most injurious of all the 
causes operating in the diffusion of epidemic disease, are 11 
file effluvia proceeding from the human body, and espe- 
cially from the lungs and the skin. The special deleteri- 
ous agent consists of highly putrescent organic matter, 
mingled with the expired air and exhalations from the 
skin.’’ This enjoins, and more particularly when 
cholera is threatened, especial attention to personal 
cleanliness, by bathing, which is the most effectual 
mode of personal purification, and the constant renew- 
ing of the air in our living and sleeping apartments, 
by thorough ventilation. In the autumn of 1849 when 
the cholera was raging in England, the Board of Health 
recommended that in every badly ventilated dwelling 
considerable and immediate relief may be given, by a 
plan suggested by Dr. Arnott, of taking a brick out of 
the ivall near the ceiling of the room, so as to open a 
direct communication between the room and the chimney. 
“I assume,” says the doctor, “that your readers know 
that fresh air for breathing is the most immediately 
URGENT OF ALL THE ESSENTIALS TO LIFE, as proved by 
the instant death of any one totally deprived of it 
through drowning or strangulation, and by the slower 
death of men compelled to breathe over again the same 
small quantity of air.” 
Assuming that these points are tolerably understood 
I have to show that the spread of cholera in this coun- 
try has been much influenced by the gross oversights re- 
ferred to. “All the valued reports and published opin- 
ions on cholera, go far to prove that in this climate, at 
least, any foreign morbific agent or influence which pro- 12 
duces it, comes, comparatively, harmless to persons of 
vigorous health, and to those who are living in favora- 
ble circumstances, but that if it find persons with the 
vital powers much depressed or disturbed from any cause, 
and even for a short time, as happens from intemper- 
ance, from improper food or drink, from great fatigue 
or anxiety, but above all from want of fresh air and 
consequently from breathing that which is foul, it read- 
ily overcomes them. It would seem as if the peculiar 
morbid agent could as little, by itself, produce the fatal 
disease as one of the two elements concerned in a com- 
mon gas explosion—namely, the coal gas and the at- 
mospheric air can alone produce the explosion. The 
great unanimity among writers and speakers on the sub- 
ject in regarding foul atmosphere as the chief vehicle or 
favorer, if not a chief efficient cause, of the pestilence 
is seen in the fact of how familiar to the common ear 
have lately become the words and phrases, malaria, 
filth} crowded dwellings, crowded neighborhoods, close 
rooms, faulty sewers, drains and cesspools, all of which 
are merely so many names for foul air, and for sources 
from which it may arise. Singularly, however, little 
attention has yet been given from authority to the chief 
source of poisonous air, and to means of ventilation, 
by which all lands of foul air may with certainty be re- 
moved. 
A system of draining and cleansing, water supply and 
flushing, for instance, to the obtainment of which, 
chiefly, the Board of Health has hitherto confined its 13 
attention—can, however good, influence only that quan- 
tity and kind of aerial impurity which arises from re- 
tained solid or liquid, filth, within or about a house, but 
it leaves absolutely untouched, the other and really 
more important kind, which, in knoivn quantities, is 
never absent where men are breathing—namely, the 
filth and poison of the human breath, and effluvia from 
the skin. This latter kind evidently plays the most 
important part. Now, good ventilation, although few 
persons, comparatively, are as yet aware of the fact, is 
easily to be had, and it not only entirely dissipates and 
renders absolutely inert, the breath and other poison of 
inmates, however numerous, and even of fever patients, 
and it will, to a considerable extent, or entirely, neu- 
tralize the otherwise ill results of defective drains, 
or the want of proper drains within our dwellings. 
Plenty of fresh air, plenty of sun-light, and plenty of 
clean water, are the three most important requisites to 
life, health and comfort. Let us strive for these with 
unremitting diligence. 
ROSS WIN A NS.