MODERN IDEAS OF SANITARY ECONOMY- 



77 



back of the other is so narrow as to prevent the circulation of 

 air and free admission of light." The landlords of such houses 

 are much blamed by the Board. 



There is great scope in this list, and already many of these 

 things pointed out have received attention. There is already, 

 in the Public Health Act, a prohibition of all very bad cellars, 

 and arrangements for purifying very dirty houses. There is 

 an inspection of mills, markets, slaughter-houses^ and such 

 places as may become nuisances. There has also been an 

 attempt in Manchester at public baths and wash-houses ; but 

 the question of dunghills has been very curiously handled. 

 It is supposed that if a dunghill has a wall round it, it is then 

 quite clean, because it becomes an ashpit. Now we know 

 that the evil can be very little diminished by this means. It 

 certainly is diminished, because the nuisance is to be calcu- 

 lated by its superficial area ; but it is so far from being affinal 

 sanitary measure, that it may be considered as the rudest form 

 by which nightsoil can be prevented from actually occupying 

 the ground on which we are to walk. The actual nuisance 

 can no more be confined by a wall, than the spirit of a man 

 by a soldered sarcophagus. 



The evil to be feared is not merely that intense accumu- 

 lation of odour which so afiects the senses, and which we 

 avoid in accordance with a very old sanitary law, the feeling 

 of disgust. What we want to avoid is that diluted impure 

 vapour which, steaming up as it does from 60,000 to 70,000 

 centres, must inevitably be found pervading every cubic inch 

 of our atmosphere. Now it so happens that these places are 

 generally behind the house, that part of the house which it is 

 most important to keep clean, — where the daily work of the 

 house is going on, — where the door is most frequently open, — ' 

 and where there is the supply of air for the whole house. The 

 whole house may fairly be said to be fed from the back yand, 

 as houses are built, and th,as it happens that when a house is 

 large enough to allow room, a door is made solely to prevent 



