Statistics show that the annual mortality in Paris is about 22.6 per thousand inhabitants, which the Parisian publications erroneously claim is below the average for large cities. In London, for example, in the week ending January 14, 1899, it was 18 per thousand, and averaged 18.5 in thirty-two provincial towns. In some of them, as Brighton, Derby, Leicester, and Hull, it ranged from 11 to 12.9; and the highest rates were from 22.4 in Manchester to 24 in Sunderland. It is a constant source of wonder to the newly-arrived in Paris, however,--especially if he be inoculated with modern ideas concerning sanitary sewage in dwelling-houses,--that the city escapes an annual epidemic of typhoid fever. So very primitive are the methods of cesspools, and the official emptying of them, in very many quarters of the city, that it is an article of faith with the citizens to close all their windows tightly at night,--an article of faith that is adopted by many American and English residents with the usual wholesome Anglo-Saxon ideas concerning ventilation of sleeping-rooms. It may be stated, however, as the result of much experience, that--even for those who are able thus to sleep in tightly-closed rooms--the open windows at night are _not_ deadly. The prejudice against night air, which is by no means confined to France, here takes on an acute form,--it is even asserted stoutly, and this, too, is believed sometimes by the otherwise intelligent foreigner, that the entrance of fresh air into the sleeping-room at night produces affections of the eyes. The quarters of Paris in which the mortality is the lowest--those which show quite white on the graded annual mortality plan of the city--are the arrondissements of the Élysée and the Opéra, 11.1 and 14.5 respectively; and those which are printed quite black on the same plan are those of the Observatoire and the Gobelins, 32.8 and 31.4 respectively.
Nevertheless, the sewerage system of Paris is conceived and carried out in its general plan with an appreciation of the requirements of modern sanitary science and an intelligent employment of the science of the engineer that are quite admirable. The methods of disposing of the city's refuse in use by many American municipalities, as those of New York and Chicago, are, by comparison, but dull and stupid perpetuation of antiquated traditions. The animated controversy over the great question of _Tout à l'égout_, "all refuse to the sewer," was not finally settled till 1894, and this method has as yet not been applied to all the quarters of the city, as stated above, but is being gradually extended, and nothing but time seems to be wanting to bring about in this capital a complete solution of one of the most difficult problems of material civilization. The object of the Parisian method is to avoid fouling the Seine in any way, and to utilize all the city's refuse, instead of throwing it away or allowing it to accumulate, a menace to health and a hideous nuisance. By an excellent system of underground conduits, well lighted and ventilated, the sewage and the rain-water are collected, carried by canals and pipes outside the city, and applied, after proper treatment, to the fertilization of certain arid tracts of land farther down the river. The principal agent in this "hygienic transformation of Paris" was the engineer Belgrand, who, at his death, in 1870, had increased the length of the municipal sewers from two hundred and twenty-eight kilomètres in 1860 to six hundred. It has now attained a total of fourteen hundred and twenty-one, representing a capital of a hundred and fifty millions of francs.