In the summer of 1858, an unusually hot spell of weather struck London. For years, the city's waste had flowed directly into the River Thames, which was also a major source of drinking water. As the temperature rose, the smell from the river became so terrible that the period became known as "the Great Stink." Members of Parliament, whose building stood on the bank of the river, tried hanging curtains soaked in chemicals over the windows, but nothing could block out the smell. Within a few weeks, they had passed a law to a new system of sewers.
London's problems had been growing for decades. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the city's population had more than doubled, reaching over two million people. At the same time, the flush toilet became more common in wealthy homes. Although it was considered a sign of progress, it sent much larger amounts of waste into the old drains, which emptied into the Thames. The city also suffered several outbreaks of cholera, a disease that killed tens of thousands of people.
At the time, most doctors believed that diseases such as cholera were spread by "miasma," or bad air rising from rotting matter. This is one reason why the smell of the Thames caused such alarm. A doctor named John Snow had suggested a different explanation. During an in 1854, he showed that many of the victims had drawn their water from the same public pump, and he argued that the disease was carried in dirty water. His idea was not widely accepted during his lifetime, however, and the decision to build the sewers was based largely on the fear of bad air.
The task of designing the new system was given to an engineer named Joseph Bazalgette. His plan was to build large tunnels running the river that would collect waste from the existing drains and carry it far to the east of the city. In total, his workers built about 1,800 kilometers of street sewers and more than 130 kilometers of main sewers. Bazalgette also made an important decision: he designed the tunnels to be much wider than the population at the time required, predicting that the city would continue to grow.
The results soon became clear. When cholera broke out again in 1866, most of the deaths occurred in a part of East London that had not yet been connected to the new system. This provided strong that clean water, not clean air, was the key to preventing the disease. Many of Bazalgette's tunnels are still in use today. However, London's population has now grown far beyond what even he imagined, and during heavy rain the system can overflow into the river. A new large tunnel has been built to solve this problem.
🎯 設問
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Q1p1_long_b
What was one reason the amount of waste in the Thames increased?
Q2p1_long_b
What did John Snow argue?
Q3p1_long_b
Why did Bazalgette make the tunnels much wider than necessary?
