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But when I press for the establishment of barracks so earnestly, and upon the honest and most humane of all principles, the necessary care of mens lives; I sincerely wish, they may never be constructed upon the absurd, and miserable plan of those in Chatham Lines, and at Hilsea, near Portsmouth, which are fitted up with low cielings[sic], and without ventilators: Such barracks, particularly, those at Hilsea, are worse for the inhabitants, than any tolerably clean King’s ship riding at anchor, in harbour, or at Spithead; because they are ever incommoded with humid, and unwholesome steams, continually exhaled from the marshy parts around them, which being overflowed twice, every twenty-four hours, to different and unequal distances, send forth the most noxious and unhealthy vapours. There are, besides, many other reasons, too tedious to mention, which make me most sincerely hope, the barracks may never be built hereafter with salt-water bricks, which ever attract humidity, on account of the salt, with which they are replete; that their walls may be above half a brick in thickness, and that some attention be had in laying the foundations, to carry off the stagnant waters by proper drains.
— Brocklesby, Richard and Boone, John (1764) Oeconomical And Medical Observations, In Two Parts. From the Year 1758 to the Year 1763. T. Becket & P. A. de Hondt, London. (source)
Todo
Salt-water bricks?