pen from sudden transitions from heat to cold. Rheumatism, in its various forms, lumbago, both acute and chronic; that is, active or long continued. I would not permit one of my patients to go to Brighton by a railway that had a tunnel in it; I should endeavour to dissuade any patient of mine from subjecting himself to such perils. I should prefer that the patient should go by an open carriage on the open road in preference to going through a tunnel, for the reasons I have assigned; I would not hesitate about it. I have no experience about the length of tunnels; I know something from experience of the difficulty of changing masses of atmosphere either in tunnels or in a large room; it is impossible to change the atmosphere in a large room, and I apprehend it would be impossible to change the atmosphere of a tunnel 600 yards long. The observations I have made apply to a tun. nel of five or six hundred yards. I have understood the tunnel in question is to that extent. I think a patient might safely go by an open railway; rapidity of motion to a delicate person would be an objection, since there would be an extraordinary change in the blanket of air belonging to the person in going along. The air in the interior of the tunnel is not precisely the same as that without; it is stationary air, having a different temperature; and it has also a commixture with other gaseous substances; it is also a damp air; if it was a warmer air than the ambient atmosphere, I think in that case speed would make it less dangerous. The majority of cases in which persons catch cold have been from going out of heat into cold; there is, however, danger on being exposed from cold to heat; many persons catching cold from sitting over a fire, or from going into warm rooms; I do not speak conjecturally.

Cross-examined by Mr. Serjeant Merewether.

I have no experience beyond the rationale I have endeavoured to give upon the subject, which is, that the change of atmosphere surrounding the individual produces the effect of chill or cold to the surface of the body; but that can be remedied by warm clothing or a close carriage. I have not arrived at the conclusion, that a slower conveyance is better, inasmuch as it may be an object that a weak person should be suddenly transferred from London to Brighton. I have stated that the atmosphere in the tunnels I assume to be nearly stationary. I do not know what length of tunnel would ventilate itself practically; but I know something about the matter with regard to wells and borings of other kinds, and 1 have had some experience upon the subject; a well would be in different circumstances from a tunnel, which would be open at both ends, whereas in

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a well there would be only an opening at the top operating upon the well. I know from experiments that a tube filled with air of considerable dimensions does not easily discharge its air by any external force employed upon the confined air, but the contrary, because of the elasticity of the air,-its propensity, if I may use such an expression respecting a passive thing,-is to avoid pressure, and to get behind any compressing force, as in the case of pressure from a piston or any thing of that kind; I know from experiments it is difficult to discharge a tunnel or a large room of any stagnant or quiescent mass of air; and I believe a 600 yards tunnel of the dimensions given would neither discharge itself nor could it be discharged by any ordinary known means. If there should be a difference in the atmosphere in the tunnel, and at the two ends of it, there would be a natural tendency in the air to equalise the difference; that is to say, if the air is colder on the inside it would have a tendency at the ends of the tunnel to mix with the atmospheric air; and, vice versa, if the air in the tunnel was warmer than the air outside, it would have a tendency to equalise itself with the external air; but this only to a limited extent; the two atmospheres, the atmosphere within and the atmosphere without, being on a different balance, would soon strike the balance in the length of a tunnel of 600 yards, and I think long before they arrived at midway; so that you could not expect from any change of temperature a current of air to pass through the whole of the tunnel. Shafts let down in the middle of the tunnel, or in other places, would have but a very limited tendency to create a draught in the tunnel; for in the attempts to ventilate, with submission, the late House of Peers and the House of Commons, the most scientific persons were consulted, and every means were devised; but I believe the means were not effectual to discharge the air confined in those rooms, although not very large, and to have pure and refreshing air introduced in its stead. I am not practically acquainted with the effect produced in cases where such shafts have been introduced into tunnels. I know that in rooms a shaft in the roof has not had any good effect. I have seen two tunnels near London, the one near the Harrow road, and the other near Islington. I have attended to that as to my own feeling. I have walked part of the way through them, and have ascertained that the feeling corresponds with my theoretical view, and what I have read on the subject, and what I have said corresponds with my own feelings. The tunnel I refer to near Islington Hill is completed; it is for a barge-way; but there is another also near the burying-ground at Kensal Green. I

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walked through part of the way; it is not finished; the centres and other impediments all in the way, but machines driven by steam were going into the tunnel; the tunnel was carried quite out to the other extremity, I believe; there was a light visible at the other end. I do not think that a shaft in the middle of a 600 yards tunnel, or two or three shafts, would have any great and efficient effect in discharging the quiescent air, or of moving it out at either end, or even upwards; that is my opinion. Supposing there were shafts, and there were carriages propelled by steam passing frequently through the tunnels, my opinion, founded on analogy, and not from any personal observation, is, that the ventilation would not be efficient. I do not think that would be an effectual check to the stationary temperature, or that a stationary air would be removed. I have gone with scientific persons to visit mines. I was brought up in the county of Durham, and knew the coal-pits then. I had the charge of two or three coal-pits when I was young. The workmen insured medical attendance by paying so much a week; we had a good many patients. They were not more than twelve hours out of twenty-four in the pit; but it is so long since. I cannot charge my memory with the number of hours, but they had a great deal of holiday above ground. They are healthy men generally; but asthmatic men, I believe, could not work; and there was a singular thing happened in regard to horses which were worked in the collieries-it was the prevailing opinion, that a horse brought up in the collieries when he came above ground went blind. cannot say that he was generally very fat when he came up, but he went blind, and the pit-horse was not a saleable horse. If the engine goes at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, the half mile would, of course, engage two minutes, and the time calculated for thirty miles per hour would be one minute for the transit through the tunnel, so that there would be three changes operating upon the individual, provided the air were different on the transit from the atmosphere to the tunnel, and on the transit from the tunnel to the atmosphere again, thus making three dips. If a hale person, undergoing the exercise of travelling upon a railroad, comes to a tunnel which he will be a minute, we will suppose, passing through in a carriage, still undergoing the motion of the carriage, I do think he will be likely to catch either cold or catarrh; and my opinion is founded on long experience; the transition would endanger a person even during the duration of one mi

nute.

I

I have known a person to become erysipelatic from a minute's exposure to the air, and the change occasioned by it; a man of some celebrity lost his life from that very

circumstance within the last month, Mr. Barry O'Meary. He was sitting near a window, he felt himself cold from the air of the window, and he changed his place, and from that exposure he went home and took to his bed and died. I say it is the same thing in effect, whether the carriage draws the individual at the rate of thirty miles in the hour, or the wind travels at the rate of thirty miles an hour, since they equally affect the person; it would be the same as to the person, whether on the surface of the lungs or on the surface of the skin, with this difference, that in the open air the air would be uncontaminated, while within the tunnel the air would be mingled with deleterious matters. Under the circumstances propounded, a person is likely certainly either to catch cold on the surface of the skin, but preferably the catarrh of the lungs; I say that in a transit of only one minute he is in peril, and I would not so expose myself. A hundred persons may pass through with impunity, and the next five may all be seized with some dangerous illness, and for that reason I would not recommend a man to go through a tunnel.

I do

not mean to say it is 100 to 5, I only speak hypothetically. Certainly many may pass through without any difficulty. Supposing they went through in a carriage, pulling up the window for a time would operate as a considerable preventative; but that would also come to a moral question, whether the passengers choose to have the window up generally; for in stage-coaches half the passengers wish the window up, and half wish to have it down. The ratio of any bad consequences would be much in proportion to the length of the tunnel. The pulling up the windows would be a certain degree of protec tion, but I cannot say how much.

Re-examined by Mr. Hill.

I have heard that on railways persons travel in two classes of carriages, one open and the other close; but I have not seen it. Persons may go into crowded hospitals where they are in great risk of contagion, and yet not take disease; they may visit a house or a place having a patient affected with the plague, or they go and visit a person with the cholera, and not take the contagion, and that produces a paradox in the medical world on which there is a division of opinion. A person escaping would not be a sufficient ground for placing himself in those circumstances. The air of a tunnel is impregnated with other gases, which makes it very different from the outward air. Sulphuretted, carburetted, and carbonic gases would be emitted from the burning of the coke, and the vapour of the steam would be condensing and would keep the atmosphere damp; and you would have also the effluvia and respi

rating products of the passengers going through, assuming hypothetically that the atmosphere is little, if at all, changed, the mass of it in the middle of the tunnel; so that a quantity of stationary or stagnant air would remain impregnated with poisonous gases, or impregnated with the effluvia of the passengers; it might be with scarlet fever or the small-pox. It is my decided opinion, from all the facts and all the consideration I have given to the subject, that the air in the interior of tunnels is in nearly a stagnant state. I think it is reasonable to conclude, as it is philosophically evident, that there must be a progressive accumulation of unwholesome or unsafe atmosphere within the tunnel, unless it can be wholly drawn or driven out in a mass, and I am not aware of any method by which to discharge it; hence there must be a progressive accumulation of evil. I know that a minute is quite sufficient to produce catarrh. It is just the rapid transition from the outward air into the tunnel, and then again into the outward air, which creates the danger. It is like exposure to the wind, and every body knows when wind is cold; in winter, although under a hedge where cattle would seek shelter, you do not feel it, notwithstanding the wind is blowing from the north. The three sudden transitions are not favourable to health; getting into an atmosphere of sixty, and making an exit from the tunnel again at thirty, must expose a person to three vicissitudes within half a minute or a minute, as it may happen. With respect to the comparison between persons going through a tunnel to persons going into a mine, very great care is taken, and very great expense incurred for the purpose of ventilating mines; those who go into mines for the purpose of labour do not expose themselves to those very sudden variations. They are tolerably well clothed, and they all take care of the inward man; they are all drinkers; but whether that does good or harm I will not say. Even considering the horses do get fat down in the mines, I would not think of sending invalids and timid and delicate persons down into mines. There have been various projects, and there is nothing, however absurd, that has not been tried in medicine; but I believe it was never yet tried to send a person into a coal-pit to cure him of any disease of the lungs. Dr. Beddoes tried experiments by artificial airs, and putting people into cow-houses, and the Lord knows what; but I do not believe that his schemes have been followed by any of his brethren. should not send my patients to a wateringplace, if the way to it were to lie through a coal-pit. Persons retain their health in coalpits, so do some also who work up to their middle in water; but that would be a very bad reason for recommending that to a per

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son affected with disease of the lungs. In bleaching-grounds I have seen men at four in the morning with the dew on the grass, which is very cold, working with bare feet; I believe they are a healthy class of persons; but when I went fishing on the same grounds, I took care to have good elastic water-proof boots. Railways, inasmuch as they furnish the means of rapid and easy transit, I consider to be very favourable to invalids. They would not be exposed to dust or rain, I apprehend, and the transit would be rapid: and by proper clothing and proper attention to the windows of the carriage, they may avoid any danger. I would not hesitate to send a person with diseased lungs by railway to Brighton; but I would not send him through a tunnel. It would be a great public benefit to have railroad conveyances for invalids without a tunnel.

Mr. Serjeant Merewether.

There have

been means used for ventilating the House of Commons; cannot the same means be used for ventilating tunnels?-I believe the same means cannot be applied; I should think not.

Examined by the Committee.

The same danger would occur to a person passing through those different temperatures of air, at the rate of thirty miles an hour, that would occur to him if the air through which he passed travelled the same rate; the cases would be analogous. A protection might be afforded by clothing. Water-proof clothing would protect a person against the vicissitudes; how far that would operate in an open carriage on a railway, I cannot say. In a warm room there would be a quiescent temperature; but in the alternate atmosphere affecting a man's body when passing through a tunnel he would pass through a general change of atmosphere, which would wash off, if I may use the expression, the local atmosphere around him. Going at the rate of thirty miles an hour would increase the circulation very little. That sort of agitation in a carriage is not considered productive of a great deal of accelerated influence on the circulation of fluids, to use a pedantic expression. Supposing that to take place, it might or it might not prevent the danger of that accelerated transition; if it increased the natural heat of the body, it would expose the body to the vicissitude of cold much more than if it remained in a temperate medium. If, instead of going in a carriage drawn by steam through a tunnel, the individual were to run through it, there would be the additional consequence of the increased circulation of blood, for running accelerates the circulation of blood very remarkably, but not the motion by travelling in a carriage at thirty miles an hour. The chief difficulty found in ventilating the Houses

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of Parliament, was not so much in changing the body of air, but in doing it without introducing some kind of draft so as to inconvenience the Members of Parliament, many of them sitting without their hats, and therefore very likely to take cold, and that it could not be got over; it was a difficulty the medical profession always felt.

Dr. James Johnson, examined by Mr. Waddington.

Are you one of the physicians to his Majesty? Yes.

How long have you been in practice?— About eighteen years.

Have you turned your attention to the effect likely to be produced by passing through tunnels at the speed of thirty miles an hour?

I have thought upon the subject; and I have been often through the tunnel and along the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad.

I believe that the engines do not go through that tunnel with very great speed?—No; the tunnel next to Liverpool they are drawn through.

In your opinion, as a physician, would you advise any person of delicate health to travel through a tunnel under those circumstances? -No, I should not, if the tunnel was of any length.

Do you think that a tunnel of 600 yards in length would produce any injurious consequences?-A tunnel of 600 yards, if it is eighty feet under the surface, must of course have a temperature constantly of about fifty. two or fifty-three degrees; consequently in summer, when the temperature of the atmosphere would be summer-heat, or seventy-six degrees, the vicissitude would be upwards of twenty degrees on immerging into the tunnel. On the contrary, if the temperature was at the freezing-point, thirty-two degrees, the rise of temperature on going into the tunnel would be twenty degrees, and the exit would be on one of equal extent and magnitude.

In your opinion the temperature of the tunnel would be pretty nearly stationary?It would be always so, if it was eighty feet below the surface of the earth.

What, in your opinion, would be the source of the greatest inconvenience or danger in passing through these tunnels; would it be the change from the atmospheric temperature to the temperature of the tunnel?-Both changes must take place.

Would that, in your opinion, be productive of serious evils?-I think the vicissitude of twenty degrees or fifteen degrees would very often be injurious, because we seldom have a vicissitude in this climate equal to that in a whole day; and we know that the vicissitudes of temperature and drought and moisture are the chief causes of pulmonary complaints and many other, such as rheu

matisms, in this climate; consequently, in winter and in summer, I consider that the transitions would be to that amount that would endanger health. When the temperature of the atmosphere was about the same temperature as the tunnel there would be very little danger or inconvenience.

To what complaints do you think that those changes would be peculiarly injurious?—Pulmonary complaints, rheumatisms, &c. People who are susceptible to atmospheric impressions would be more injured than those who are much in the open air.

You are speaking generally of delicate persons, because of course persons of very strong health may stand it. Is erysipelas sometimes produced by sudden changes of air? Yes, it is. I attended Barry O'Meara, who died of that complaint, as Sir Anthony Carlisle has mentioned, and he got it by standing at an open window.

Do you think that the sudden change from light to darkness would be productive of any injury to persons in a nervous state?-I think reverberation of sound is of more consequence than the vicissitude of temperature.

That you speak to from your own experience? Yes; because in going even under the arches on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad it is like a peal of thunder, and consequently in a long and confined space I conceive that the reverberation would be tremendous with a locomotive-engine; if it was drawn slowly it would not have that effect. I think that the noise in going thirty miles an hour would give a very great shock to delicate people.

To persons liable to affections in the heart or head, would it be dangerous?—Yes.

Would you send such persons through those tunnels?—No, I would not. If you will give me leave I will read a few lines which were printed two years ago upon this subject, and consequently they could not be directed to this inquiry.

Had you turned your attention to this subject two years ago?-I wrote a tour, and included the railroad in that tour, and this was the expression that I made use of: "The deafening peal of thunder, the sudden immersion in gloom, and the clash of reverberated sounds in a confined space, combined to produce a momentary shudder or idea of destruction, a thrill of annihilation," &c.

Those were your sensations, were they?→ Yes.

And that, I understand, was an engine that did not go at the rate of thirty miles an hour? That was in going under the arches; in the tunnel they go at the usual rate, from twenty to thirty miles an hour.

Of course those arches were very small in length; perhaps as much as thirty or forty or fifty yards? Not so much.

Have you the least doubt that in going through a tunnel of 600 yards at this speed the effect upon the senses would be very great indeed-I think the shock from the reverberation of sound would be very disagreeable, to say the least of it, to sensitive people.

What would you think of sending a delicate lady by a railroad of this sort?-I should not advise it.

Would you ever think of such a thing → No; not if there were other conveyances.

Would any thing induce you to send a lady in a state of pregnancy by a locomotive-engine through one of these tunnels ?-I would never think of recommending it at all; on the contrary, I should advise her not to go by it.

Would you advise a delicate person to go by a railroad where there were no tunnels; would you have the same objection to that? -No; the only objection is passing the arches, and that is momentary.

Would there be objection from the speed in going in the open air?-No, not at all; I consider it pleasant at various times. I have travelled upon the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, and I liked that mode of travelling better, both inside and out, than by the common carriage.

Then all your objection applies to passing through those tunnels?-Yes.

On the contrary, it would be a great advantage in sending down invalids that they should perform the journey with great rapidity? Of course.

We have had it from a witness before; but do not you know that a vast number of invalids are sent from London to Brighton for their health?-Yes; a great many are sent, and a great number go voluntarily, for their health.

You have stated to us your objections, from the state of the temperature and from the sound, have you any other with respect to the gases which would be evolved from this engine; you are aware that the engine is to burn coke?-Yes, I am. I think that there would be very considerable inconvenience from the heat of the engine, independently of any gas or any deleterious atmosphere. I think that there will be experienced in these tunnels a very considerable inconvenience, from the heat being rolled rapidly over their heads, particularly to those who are in the open carriages, and where it cannot be expended in the atmosphere as in open railroads. And from the vapour which is produced by the coke?-Yes.

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nel of 600 yards will be traversed ?—I calcu late about a minute.

And, assuming it to be about a minute, you think that those consequences will arise? -I do not think the shortness is of any great consequence, because the sudden vicissitude of twenty or thirty degrees, for instance, in a minute will produce very considerable effects.

You do not think it possible that a tunnel of 600 yards could be so ventilated as to bring it to an approximation to the temperature of the general atmosphere?—I think it impossible to alter the temperature, because it must take the temperature of the parts surrounding it; the air might be changed, but whenever changed it would instantly come to the temperature of the solid parts around..

The change would be something like that of a gentleman going into a cellar for a bottle of wine?-Yes. 1 consider there would be something like ventilation by the rapid movement of the carriages, because the train must dislodge from one end or other a volume of air equal to the train itself; and therefore when the train went on there would be that volume dislodged; there would also be a slight current produced by the rapid transit of the train.

For inside passengers there is no means of obviating that matter by putting up the windows? They might put up the windows.

By submitting to a circumambient blanket round them in that tunnel they would escape the danger of catching cold-They would escape it much more than by not doing so; but it is impossible to obviate it wholly, because it is impossible to make the carriage wholly air-tight; and if the windows are put up they will be obliged to put them down directly they get out of the tunnel again.

And when they get out of the tunnel they will be in the same temperature as they were before they entered it?-Yes.

And they may have Macintoshes, and so on, to protect them?-They cannot cover their lungs; they may, of course, protect the surface of the body, but not the lungs.

Will you be kind enough to tell me where it was you anticipated annihilation?—I did not anticipate annihilation—it was a figurative expression, of course; in passing under the arches on the different parts of the line. In going under the arches ?-Yes.

All those evils will be considerably increased by the length of the tunnels?—Yes. The longer the tunnel the more forcible all your objections?—Yes.

The principal objection is the change of temperature?—Yes; that and the reverberation of sound I consider almost the only objection.

You have been kind enough to write a book