Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 78-79. (Budapest, 1976)

TANULMÁNYOK - Mádai Lajos: Településhigiénés és demográfiai viszonyok a fővárosban az 1870-es években (angol nyelven)

Refuse water went to the Danube without filtration polluting the river and also subsoil water and the water of the wells along the banks. The butchers of Buda used to wash the meat of the animals in the Danube before selling it. When the level of the river rose, it could not carry away the water coming from the sewers any more, so the streets got under water and everything was stinking. The old sewers were built not of concrete but of bricks, so the dirty water could filter through and poison the soil. After long debates over the various plans for a new sewerage system, it was built out only by the late 1890's. Another important problem to be solved was to secure healthy drinking water for the population. At the time of the unification the running water system was built out only in some parts of Buda, while in Pest the inhabitants got drinking water from wells the quality of which was very bad causing various illnesses like enteric fever, dysentery, and inflammation of the bowels. Professor József Fodor analysed the hygienic conditions of air, soil, and water between 1876 and 1880 with scientific methods. The water of the 454 examined wells contained 250 mgm chloride and 410 mgm nitrate per liter, while the acceptable quantity is 120 mgm of each. [2] The running water system was in the beginning very small, and was limited to the City and Lipótváros. The quality of the water was, however, not good, as filtered water mixed with unfil tered one when the level of the Danube was too high. In 1874 only 15% of the houses had running water, in 1880 23%. The daily average of filtered water per capita in 1874 was 20.3 1, in 1880 it was 59.1 1. The last decade of the past century saw a faster development in this field, in 1900 the above average being 182.3 1 per capita. SOME INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN HYGIENIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC CONDITIONS AND MORTALITY Table 2 shows us that a century ago more than one third of all deaths in the capital was caused by infectious diseases. In 1970 the rate of this type of death was no more than 2.2%. The grave consequences of these illnesses and the results in their repression can be illustrated by the fact that while in the years after the unification of the city 4,511 out of 300,000 people died of infectious diseases, in 1970 the number of the deaths was only 549 out of the two million inhabitants. Deaths caused by infectious disease and various parasites amounted to 14.99 per mille in 1874 -75, while in 1970 only to 0.27 per mille, i.e. mortality was in the late last century fifty times as frequent as today. Medical science has thrown light on the clinical, etiological appearence of many hitherto unknown or puzzling diseases and diagnostics have now a much better foundation and therefore the old diagnoses make a comparison with the present forms of disease possible only to a very limited extent. With all this, it is worth while considering the causes of death in the years 1876— 1881 as they were called in those days. Forty-three percent of the 15 causes of death belonged to the infectious diseases. Tuberculosis was the most frequent cause of death with 22.4%, and taking those above the age of four into account only, this percentage is still higher, it is 33.4%.