324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



exist, its death-rate can not be expected to compare favorably with 

 that of cities more exclusive in respect to the inmates of their pub- 

 lic institutions, with comparatively no immigration from other 

 countries, and with the superior sanitary conditions incident to a 

 scattered population and to small and healthy abodes for single 

 families. 



2. Tenement-houses. Under an act of the Legislature of 

 1867 "for the regulation of tenement and lodging houses in the 

 cities of New York and Brooklyn," the improvement of this class 

 of houses commenced, and it has been continued under subsequent 

 enactments with the following results. To improve the light and 

 ventilation of tenement-houses, windows to the halls have been 

 introduced in dark rooms, transom windows over the doors, and 

 ventilators in the roofs over hallways. Privy-vaults and cess- 

 pools have been banished, and school-sinks and hopper-closets in 

 the yards, or water-closets and kitchen sinks within the dwellings 

 substituted, all connected with the street sewers. Defects in 

 plumbing and drainage have been removed, iron soil-pipes substi- 

 tuted for imperfect earthenware drains where necessary, and new 

 and improved appliances introduced when practicable. By fre- 

 quent and thorough inspections by sanitary officers, overcrowding 

 is prevented, cleanliness is encouraged among the tenants, and the 

 necessary repairs and whitewashing secured from owners or 

 agents. In addition to the inspections made upon complaints, and 

 in the course of routine sanitary work, a wise and salutary pro- 

 vision of law now requires that all tenement-houses should be 

 inspected twice yearly. The education of the inmates of tenement 

 houses in habits of cleanliness and as to the importance of minor 

 sanitary rules and regulations, a legitimate result of these fre- 

 quent inspections and of the visits of a large corps of medical in- 

 spectors during the summer months, has been invaluable to the 

 public health. But so long as New York remains the objective 

 point of emigration, and until temperance, frugality, and morality 

 are universal, the ignorant, indigent, intemperate, and irreclaim- 

 ably vicious part of the population must be an extensive field for 

 the philanthropist and the sanitarian. 



The improvement in the plans for light and ventilation, plumb- 

 ing and drainage of tenement-houses recently erected is the great 

 sanitary achievement of the last quarter of a century. For a long 

 period the standard tenement-house erected in New York was an 

 oblong brick box upon the ordinary city lot, twenty-five by one 

 hundred feet, covering nearly the entire space, four or five stories 

 high, imperfectly lighted and only from front and rear, halls and 

 sleeping-rooms narrow, dark, and unventilated, with no bath, wash- 

 ing, or proper privy accommodations, and generally without Croton 

 water within the building. Not infrequently this plan of construe- 



