i 7 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.- 



as a fit place to locate tlie homes of artisans and laborers. The 

 better construction of tenement-bouses under the eye of vigilant 

 sanitary inspectors has produced a truly marvelously diminished 

 death-rate. In the mud hovels of Ireland cabins of only one 

 room the average continuance of life was twenty-six and a half 

 years, when in the rural cottages of English agricultural laborers 

 it was from fifty to fifty-six. In the model homes for laborers 

 that have been built within the last twenty years in London, 

 the death-rate has been brought down lower than in the best parts 

 of rural England. Chadwick says that houses in the wynds of 

 Glasgow were in a worse condition than the most loathsome pris- 

 ons Howard visited, with a death-rate of forty-two in the thou- 

 sand; sanitation has brought it down to twenty-eight, and in 

 corresponding quarters in London it has been brought down to 

 seventeen or eighteen, and the rebuilding of the fifteen acres ad- 

 jacent to Bethnal Green will reduce it still further. 



House-drainage synonymous v?\\h properly constructed plumb- 

 ing has justly engaged a large share of attention from the sani- 

 tarian. By thorough attention to it (her sewers and water-supply 

 were right before) Boston has reduced her death-rate from thirty- 

 one to twenty. Croydon, England, which had a death-rate of 

 twenty-eight, has brought it down to thirteen. These are only 

 specimens of what has become an almost universal movement 

 among intelligent communities. 



The next life-saving advance is the superior ease of warming 

 our houses made possible by the improved locomotion that 

 brings the wealth of the coal-mines to our doors and enables us 

 to maintain a steady fire from fall to spring, that diffuses a gen- 

 tle warmth all over the house, and forestalls all possibility of 

 " taking a chill " while waiting for the fire to kindle. Even the 

 friction-match comes in for its share of the prolonging of life. 

 Doubtless many a fatal pneumonia and pleurisy has been con- 

 tracted when the luckless householder's fire had died out over- 

 night, and he was struggling with flint, steel, and tinder-box. It 

 is only half a century since the indispensable friction-match came 

 into general use. 



The comfort of the warmed, luxuriously furnished, storm-de- 

 fying railroad-car, contrasted with the exposure and discomfort 

 of the stage-coach, needs but to be alluded to. 



Another factor that has contributed largely, no doubt, to the 

 diminution of mortality is the cessation of intramural interments 

 and the establishment of cemeteries often justly described as 

 " rural " removed from the busy centers of population. There 

 are no statistics on which to found a comparison, but the known 

 chemical products of mortal decay, and the known porosity of 

 the earth, are of themselves enough to convince the thinking 



