THE SANITARY RELIEF 
OF 
New Orleans, 
A Paper Read Before the New Orleans Medical and Surgical 
Association, October 31st, 1SS5, 
BY 
JOSEPH HOLT, M. D.f 
President Board of Health, State of Louisiana. 
Reprint from December Number New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. 
NEW ORLEANS: 
L. Graham & Son, Printers, 99 & 101 Gravier St. The Sanitary Relief of New Orleans * 
Joseph Holt, M. D., New Orleans 
This paper was prepared by request of the editors of 
the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, who 
desire an expression of my views concerning an efficient 
system of drainage and general sanitary relief for the city 
of New Orleans. 
It is the intention of these gentlemen to elicit several 
papers on this subject with the avowed purpose of uniting 
in and vigorously supporting the popular agitation of a 
measure conceded to be of more vital importance to the 
interests of this community, present and prospective, than 
any other with which it can possibly have to deal. 
The necessities of the situation are imperative. 
The Board of Health, Auxiliary Sanitary Association 
and daily press are awakening with determined energy to 
the necessity of a concentrated effort in the direction of 
permanent reform. 
It behooves this association, gentlemen, in order to 
maintain the integrity of a record as a faithful worker in 
the field of professional and public utility, to throw the 
whole weight of its intellectual force, together with its 
time and zeal into an earnest participation in a cause which 
contemplates the redemption of New Orleans from the 
bondage of misfortune ; from a subtle a malignant influence 
as persistent as the penalty of violated law ; a redemption 
of this city from the insalubrity of its own soil, which is 
the fostering parent of all our woes. 
To remove this menace, this constant source of mischief, 
and to furnish in its stead an assurance of a reasonable 
*A paper read before the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Association. Saturday, 
October 31st, 1885. 2 
preservation of the public health is to liberate this city, 
socially, industrialy and commercialy. Not to do so 
means to consign it hopelessly to degradation and decay. 
If there are claims upon our patriotism, the motives of 
life, the love of family and self, higher than this demand, 
we have yet to know of them ! 
The magnitude and urgency of the question fully war- 
rant an ample discussion of it, which can only be done by 
beginning at the source and following the line of sequence 
until we reach an explanation of our present state of utter 
lack of efficient sanitary methods. 
At this late period in the development of New Orleans, 
when its population numbers nearly a quarter of a million, 
and its compact squares already cover several thousand 
acres of low, swamp land, scarcely redeemed from its primi- 
tive condition—more than cutting off the timber, clearing the 
ground, filling pools, laying out streets indicated by superfi- 
cial side ditches, and building upon the squares enclosed 
by them—we now propose to “ agitate the question ” of 
beginning a work of municipal sanitation which should 
have been planned half a century ago, and should have pro- 
gressed as the essential frame work of the general growth. 
Here is the first cause ! the very beginning of all the in- 
convenience, the special discomfort, the oft-recurring 
calamities and direful distress endured these many years 
in the wretched condition of our streets, the accumulations 
of sewage matter, extensive inundations of inhabited dis- 
tricts, a high mortality sustained by an undrained swamp- 
soil, the impossibility of efficient sanitation under existing 
conditions, and the sweep of pestilential infections, which 
find in these conditions the elements of propagation as 
responsive as gunpowder to a spark. 
Could we formulate a problem in simple addition, noting 
in its columns all the annoyance, the wretchedness, the 
disease, death, commercial loss, depression of property 
values, money realized here and invested in real estate else- 
where, retarded growth by such depletion and the deflec- 
tion of immigration, depression of enterprise and public 3 
spirit, the enforced idleness, growth of thriftlessness, what 
an appalling sum total would be shown on the debit side 
of no drainage ! no sewage ! 
Can there exist such a spendthrift account against this 
people, and yet no one to blame? Have these things just 
so happened, and no personal responsibility for their occur- 
ence ? 
It is fashionable, we know, to make a boisterous out-cry 
about foul gutters and dirty and unpaved streets, the out- 
rageous condition of drainage canals, aud to pass a sweep- 
ing condemnation upon the city authorities in general, and 
the heads of certain departments, notably that of public 
improvements in particular. 
In making this remark, I do not refer to the exposure of 
official negligence and the stern enforcement of responsi- 
bility by a public spirited body of citizens, but to those sen- 
sational displays begotten of inordinate conceit and a love 
of notoriety, which work no good, but inflict harm only. 
An implacable enemy of official negligence and dishon- 
esty, when proven, I am equally the advocate of justice. 
There are no terms too strong in which to condemn the 
popular hue-and-cry sometimes, or rather, periodically, in- 
stigated against these officials for not performing the her- 
culean task of cleansing this Augean stable, and holding 
them to the extremest exaction of accountability for the 
condition of streets, gutters and drainage ; at all times bad 
enough, sometimes abominable. 
Allow neither excuse nor condoning of the faults of 
officials, but exact of them the full measure of work. De- 
mand all that can fairly be required, but let justice square 
with reason. 
The authorities can no more accomplish the proper sani- 
tation of this city as it is, than they can reverse the revolu- 
tion of the planet in its orbit. 
The case is a serious one and needs treatment, but harsh 
criticism and vehement anathema are not the remedies to 
meet the conditions complained of. They excite public 
clamor and outbursts of indignation which serve to enter- 4 
tain the attention for a few days and then subside like 
wavelets upon a pool. To say the least, they have been 
long and vigorously tried, but with results so poor, as'to 
necessitate a change. 
The authorities are simply the exponents of the people, 
who are themselves finally responsible, and are as much to 
blame as the authorities ! The sins of commission and of 
omission are about even all around, and for this reason let 
us dismiss crimination and recrimination as remedial 
agents. 
In the philosophy of our municipal history we shall find 
the causes of the present situation and the remedy will 
suggest itself. 
The misfortunes at home and the knowledge of them 
abroad, magnified by the unscrupulous into wildest ex- 
aggerations and grossest calumnies, the procrastinations of 
the past, laid as an accumulated task upon the present, are 
legacies singularly like the iniquities of the fathers visited 
upon the children even unto the third and fourth genera- 
tions. 
Long before the war, during a period of many decades, 
this city reveled in wealth, and could wrell have afforded 
to lay the sure foundation of a complete system of sanita- 
tation. It could easily have established such a beginning 
as would have compelled succeeding generations to go on 
with its completion. 
Thomas Jefferson understood the main features of our 
sanitary necessities and suggested the proper method of 
building the city. 
With the exception of Benjamin Morgan, Samuel J. 
Peters, James H. Caldwell, and some two or three other 
broad minded, far-seeing men of their time, there was not 
enough public spirit, not enough genuine love of the city 
itself, to provide a substantial heritage for the future, or even 
to care particularly about the present beyond the gratifica- 
tion of self. 
We are the heirs direct of retributive justice ; of all the 
fruits of political shouldering ; the unworthy bestowal of 5 
public trusts ; of all the dishonesty ; official negligence ; 
the general apathy of professional and business men in 
municipal affairs ; of all the civic transgressions of our pre- 
decessors. 
These spent their days of activity in the all-absorbing 
effort of getting ric-h, in order to go somewhere else to 
spend their wealth and to educate their children. 
A prevailing sense of temporary abode ; the actual ab- 
senteeism of many large property-holders, all gave direction 
to municipal indifference and a disposition to relegate to 
political aspirants the annoyance of questions involving, not 
only the healthy growth, the maintenance of supremacy, 
but the destiny of New Orleans. 
“Let the future take care of itself!" was the motto, 
cruel ! selfish ! false ! Aye ! and we in the living present 
are assembled here to-night for the purpose of self-protec 
tion, by caring for the results of improvidence, with the 
odds against us ! 
The men of this day rise up in judgment against that 
generation ; for they were false in the obligations which 
are binding upon all men to make them responsible to the 
future, and have betrayed that future to the calamities 
which have befallen it. 
Now comes the question which brings the matter home, 
and fixes a responsibility upon ourselves ! Shall we continue 
in the selfish negligencies and the iniquities of our predeces- 
sors and transmit this record of improvidence, and thus 
compel the repetition of our own sad experiences? 
If every business man, lawyer, editor and doctor could 
only carry with him the conviction of responsibility to the 
future of his family and of his own interests—could work 
and eat and sleep with it as an ever-present reflection, 
New Orleans would be the best drained and the cleanest 
city in America inside of ten years. 
There is no beginning to the solid advancement of New 
Orleans, ex c eft the beginning of assured health established 
upon the efficient drainage and sewerage of the city. 
To accomplish these, the work must be scientific ; not 6 
the disjointed and puerile attempts such as exhibit the ves- 
tiges of their creation in that marvellous reticulation of big 
ditches running through the mud in opposite and most un- 
expected directions ; beginning nowhere in particular, and 
ending anywhere generally ; those huge accumulations of 
seething, bubbling putrescence in sluggish flow, revolting 
to the sight, polluting the air, and an abiding menace to 
the public health; called in a spirit of grim joke, “The 
Drainage System,” just as people call a boil a pet. 
A system of drainage ! inscrutable in purpose (since it 
drowns out at times whole neighborhoods) ; in construction, 
monumental to the energy, the public enterprise, the faith- 
fulness and intelligence of a people. Let us bury our 
monuments ! Let us cease this wasteful expenditure upon 
a miserly system, and by a liberal economy show substan- 
tial improvements for the money and time spent, and not 
these hulks of draining machines and cess-pools. 
Within the last thirty-four years, from 1852 to 1885, in- 
clusive, there has been expended by the municipal authori- 
ties, under the account of “Streets,” and “Drainage” 
the enormous sum of What is there to show 
for it? 
The taxation represented by these figures is truly a 
drainage, but how long shall we suffer this hopeless deple- 
tion of property, for no other end than a mere show and 
pitiful pretense in the matters of streets and drainage im- 
provement? 
As we are, a hundred millions may eventually be wrung 
from the people by taxation, and the money expended 
with nothing but unpaved and dirty streets, and cess-pools 
to show for it! 
In making a movement, the first, and by far the most 
serious obstacle opposed will be the declared lack of money,, 
the plea of poverty. We must surely expect to be con- 
fronted with this standing apology for inaction, embodied 
in these replies : 
“ But property has depreciated and cannot stand the ex- 7 
pense ; we are too poor to begin ! The argument is strictly 
business in its pretension.” 
What is the cause of the depreciation? 
Is property ever too poor to stand an increase of fifty, 
one hundred, two hundred per cent in value? 
What would be the difference between property values 
in New Orleans, undrained, sometimes partially inundated, 
no efficient sewage disposal and a high death-rate, and 
New Orleans thoroughly drained, its sewage disposed of 
promptly and mortuary statistics permanently reduced ? 
The conclusions inevitably drawn from these inquiries are 
all on the side of permanent sanitary improvement. 
The inducements to live here are widely known and ful- 
ly appreciated. 
With so many conditions favorable to the possibilities 
and comforts of living; presenting an unlimited field for 
manufacturing and commercial enterprise, why are there 
not a million inhabitants? 
Simply because our record is open before the world. 
Just turn to your Worcester dictionery, unabridged, for the 
word sanitary and you will find an instance of its defini- 
tion cited thus :—“ The sanitary condition of New Orleans 
as illustrated by its mortuary statistics' ’ We all know the 
import of that explanation. 
The world demands of us a reasonable guaranty for the 
protection of life and health. 
No prudent and truthful man can declare his confidence 
in the safety of New Orleans from the invasions of pesti- 
lence, until these conditions which invite, yea, seem in- 
deed sufficient to create disease, are radically destroyed. 
Quarantine as we may! declare non-intercourse with the 
world! build around ourselves a wall without gates, if we 
will! until this city is provided with a superficial and sub- 
soil drainage, and its sewage disposed of through some ef- 
ficient system, we live in jeopardy, yea, in the certainty of 
disaster. 
As Cato, in speaking on any subject, invariably conclud- 
ed with an urgent appeal for the salvation of Rome : “ But 8 
it is my opinion cartilage must be destroyed! ” so must we 
on all occasions urge our opinion : “ New Orleans, to be 
SAVED, MUST BE DRAINED AND CLEANED ! ” 
Municipal sanitation, (a modern term which implies 
drainage of soil and removal of refuse), together with a 
watchful and rational precaution against the introduction 
of pestilential infections, constitute the entire measure of 
human effort against yellow fever, cholera and, including 
vaccination, small-pox. 
To rely upon municipal sanitation or upon quarantine 
alone is a wilful abondonment of one-half the resources of 
defense. We may escape for a while, but are taking des- 
perate chances on the future. “ New Orleans, to be 
SAVED, MUST BE DRAINED AND CLEANED ! ” 
When we so change local conditions as to make them un- 
favorable to the spread of pestilential infections and at the 
same time use rational measures against their introduction, 
then may we boldly talk of guarantees and refer to our 
achievements with pride; but until then a modest reticence 
and a devout thankfulness for deliverence are far more be- 
coming than, the presumptuous “i did it!” the boastful 
attitude of a fool. 
To begin the great work of municipal sanitary improve- 
ment, the course which presents itself to my mind as the 
wisest to pursue is this : Begin with the determination to 
establish a fixed plan that shall serve for all future work. 
There can be no permanency and hence no good results 
unless the disturbance incident to frequent changes in local 
and State governments are carefully provided against; which 
can be done in one way only : create a supervising author- 
ity, free from all political influence and entanglement. 
Until the people and their representatives are ready to 
concede this much for the redemption of all, it is useless to 
begin. 
Call this supervising head The Board of Public Works, 
as suggested by Dr. C. B. White. Let it consist, primarily, 
of seven citizens, chosen (four by the city and three by 
the State), for their known integrity, clear judgment, their 
zeal and efficiency as public-spirited men. 9 
Let the term of office be for seven years; one term to 
expire annually and the vacancies to be filled either by the 
Board directly or upon its recommendation, thus making 
the body self-perpetuating. 
It is unnecessary to consider here the functions of this 
Board further than to state that it shall immediately employ 
the highest order of talent and experience in municipal en- 
gineering, with a view of perfecting surveys, formulating 
plans and commencing work. 
Such legislation, city and State, as may be required to 
create this Board, prescribe its duties, raise money and 
otherwise assist, should be secured at the earliest practica- 
ble moment. 
As to the best plan of draining this city, there are nearly 
as many contrary opinions as there are persons to express 
them. 
While this question must be left to the Board and its 
associate engineers for the selection and final adoption of a 
plan, it is well, in the meantime, to agitate the subject in 
every possible way in order to elicit the fullest expression 
of opinion from all who are willing to give the subject con- 
sideration. 
These discussions excite public interest and develop a 
vast amount of useful investigation and valuable suggestion. 
In the absence of a Board and its advisory body of ac- 
complished experts, it is not presumptuous in any one to 
speak his mind freely and to write what he chooses on the 
subject of drainage plans. 
It is not in bold expressions of opinion that danger lies, 
but in timid reticence and fatal apathy. The whole case 
with us is simply one in which we are the victims of indif- 
ference. 
For myself, I entertain very positive ideas in regard to 
the best method of superficial, storm-water and sub-soil 
drainage of this city, and am heartily in accord with our 
good friend, “ The Daily City Item,” in its general view 
of the question. 
It is my belief that a plan of sanitation can be com- 10 
menced at moderate cost; that every dollar expended in its 
development would be for present relief in the direction of 
a permanent system ; and that in a few years, without the 
necessity of increased financial embarrassment, New Or- 
leans may enjoy the comfort at home and reputation 
abroad, so long withheld, which she so rightfully demands, 
but her citizens alone can confer. 
Let us bring forward, now, the facts bearing on the 
drainage problem which seem to indicate the methods of its 
solution. 
The statement is made as a suggestion to and a reason 
for a Board of Public Works, with associate 
which should be created without delay with full power to 
survey the field of their labor and put into execution a plan 
of permanent relief. A plan that will admit of indefinite 
extension without being changed ; one that shall meet the 
necessities of the present, and provide, as in duty bound, 
for a population of a million of inhabitants. 
New Orleans like Chicago, is built upon a surface, al- 
most flat, and so near the surrounding water-levels (in our 
case sometimes below), that its drainage and sewage must 
be wholly artificial. 
In both cities drainage and sewage must ultimately pass 
through the same channels of discharge however separate 
the arrangement at their source. 
Any system that violates the laws of sanitation contra- 
dicts and condemns itself. 
Chicago is now warring against the drainage and sewage 
contamination of her lake front. 
New Orleans must not permit such discharge upon her 
river front, and under no conditions allow the outflow of 
sewage into Lake Pontchai'train. 
The discharge of sewage into slack-water, except at a 
great distance, is an offensive and dangerous procedure 
It constitutes the main difficulty opposed to the sanitation 
of Chicago, the cities of Holland, Marseilles, Toulon, 
Naples, Havana, in fact, nearly all the lake and sea-coast 
cities. 11 
The shore of Lake Pontchartrain is a delightful pleasure 
resort at our doors, and should be beautified and made 
more inviting. 
Together with these considerations, every step in the 
present ought to be taken with a view to the ultimate ex- 
tension of the city laterally to the lake. 
To permit this shallow slack-water, heated during many 
months under a tropical sun, to be contaminated by the in- 
pouring of a mass of putrid sewage to be spread out and 
exposed upon extensive mud flats along shore, made bare 
by daily wind-tides, would be the perpetuation of an al- 
ready intolerable nuisance, and the imposition upon our 
successors of an abomination for greater than any we have 
yet endured. 
In what direction shall the course of drainage be? 
It is physically impossible to drain the city coastwise, 
upward : we must not drain it into the river front or into 
Pontchartrain ; we are therefore compelled to drain it direct 
ly downward from the upper to the lower limits of the city, 
through a “ cloaca maxima,” or central viaduct, of par- 
ticular construction, laid along the line of lowest depres- 
sion, in the valley between the levee on the river front and 
Metairie Ridge. 
The water-shed or area of drainage to be relieved by 
this system is bounded above by the Upper Line Protection 
Levee, below by the Lower Protection Levee, in front bv 
the levee along the river bank, and in rear by the Metarie 
Ridge. 
The protection of this basin against inundation from 
without is the first piece of work to be accomplished by 
the completion of protection levees. 
The next step is to establish a central drain, as stated, 
through the length of the city, to serve as the trunk, in re- 
lation to which the entire system of out-branching street 
gutters, smaller canals, sub-soil-tile drains and sewage 
pipes shall be constructed. 
It is impossible to include in this discussion, certainly 12 
at present, the question of a system of excremental sewage. 
This can well be deferred for a later developement. 
The central drain is truly a grand cloaca or main gut, 
for its contents are necessarily not only drainage water but 
any and every kind of refuse matter washed or cast into it. 
Work upon it would have to commence at the lowest end 
of the city and progress upward. 
Claiborne street, including the Claiborne canal, offers the 
most advantageous line. 
To illustrate its construction, its source should be at the 
point of junction of the Upper Line with the river, where 
a small flushing engine should be stationed. It should begin 
with a depth of three feet by five in width. These dimen- 
sions should gradually increase in conformity with the nat- 
ural law which regulates the capacity of the bed of a stream 
to suit the accessions to it in its course. The rate of in- 
crease in dimensions should be such as to attain a depth of 
thirty feet at its outfall. 
I am simply illustrating an idea, gentlemen, and not pre- 
tending to prescribe exact data ! 
The advantages of this sharply increasing depth are a 
rapidity of current and the allowance for deep sub-soil 
drainage, besides providing a temporary reservoir ample to 
accommodate a sudden and heavy rainfall. 
With a proper sub-soil drainage, the construction of such 
a canal would be equivalent to raising the entire city eight 
or ten feet. Canal street, for example, is twelve feet 
higher at the base of the levee than it is at a point a little 
beyond Claiborne street. The depth of the canal at the 
point of crossing added to this natural decline gives a fall 
of twenty-five or twenty-eight feet available for the drainage 
of Canal street and its tributary squares. 
Whenever street gutters should require too deep a cut 
in order to acquire sufficient fall in their course towards the 
canal, the trouble could be overcome by final emptying 
through underground pipes. 
The central drain should be so constructed as to insure 
the greatest scouring effect of current, and therefore ap- 13 
proximating a V shaped bottom to prevent accumulation of 
deposit It should be faced throughout with heavy creo- 
soted planking securely placed. 
It should subtend the two navigation canals through 
groups of six foot iron tubes, and a special engine placed 
at these points to facilitate flow, if necessary. 
Although, in after years, it might be concluded to make 
this drain subterranean it should be commenced as an 
open one, against which no valid objection can be urged, 
inasmuch as it would occasion no offense whatever, as will 
now be explained. 
The present system of flushing, inaugurated with such 
excellent results by the Auxilliary Sanitary Association, 
would be extended the entire river front, so that every 
latitudinal street gutter would be flushed in addition to the 
flushing engine at the head of the canal, and thus a head 
of cold river water would be maintained in the canal, with 
a current of at least two miles an hour. 
It matters not what kind of matter might enter the canal, 
it would instantly be diluted in a flood of pure cold water 
and start on a run that would throw it entirely out of the 
city from the most remote point in the course of four or five 
hours, at most. 
At the lower end or outfall of the central drain the final 
disposal of the ordinary daily discharge should be accom- 
plished by a powerful lifting pump or engine, of enormous 
capacity, driving it through pipes well out into the river 
where it would be diluted in an infinite volume of water in 
rapid flow, and would also undergo speedy destruction by 
oxidation. 
New Orleans has as much right to sewer into the Missis- 
sippi as all the other cities on its banks and tributaries, in- 
cluding Chicago which is at this moment bending its ener- 
gies to cut a sewage canal and drain into the Illinois and 
save her precious lake front. 
To meet the exigencies of a heavy rush of storm water 
the canal should bifurcate at a point close to the discharg- 14 
ing engine just mentioned. This prong should lead by the 
straightest line into Bayou Bienvenue which should be 
dredged through to Lake Borgne. A supplementary en- 
gine should be placed at the cut through the protection 
levee for the purpose of urging the outflow of the flood, 
and in times of high water outside the levee, of lifting it 
over the levee in its final discharge. 
By this arrangement Bayou Bienvenue would become a 
safety valve in emergencies, but not to be used as the ordi- 
nary channel of discharge, because sewage passing into it 
would quickly precipitate, choking the channel and perpet- 
uating the noisome odors and disgusting spectacle so con- 
spicuously a feature of the present drainage system 
To afford still greater security against excessive rainfall, 
the central drainage canal should be tapped at a point about 
midway of its course by a relief canal which should afford 
lateral discharge into Pontchartrain, along the line, if pos- 
sible, of some existing canal. This additional safety-valve 
should also be provided with a draining machine. 
I will close this paper with an earnest appeal couched in 
the language of the committee of the Citizen’s Association, 
in their report on the Main Drainage and Water Supply of 
Chicago : 
“ Your committee would urge with all possible force the 
necessity of an expert commission to make the fullest in- 
vestigation. 
The commission should be constituted for an ample 
period, and be sufficient in number to give competent ex- 
pert consideration to all phases of the problem and to elim- 
inate purely personal views. To suppose that those charged 
with executive duties in a great city will find the leisure to 
adequately consider the matter would be to ignore our past 
history. 
A general plan can be carried out, step by step, to the 
gradual improvement of the sanitary condition, and without 
creating a debt or requiring an extraordinary tax levy. 
A comprehensive plan, any portion of which may be 15 
•carried into execution whenever the conditions make it 
necessary, and which will still dovetail into the general 
system, demands for its conception and elaboration the 
creation of an expert commission, to which the whole sub- 
ject of main drainage should be at once committed for ex- 
haustive study and report.’’ 
Thanking you, gentlemen, for the patience you have 
bestowed upon me, I will conclude with the sincere hope 
that the subject of this paper will receive the consideration 
it deserves.