SANITARY ESSENTIALS. 329 



taminate both air and water, and injurioiifsly affect the health 

 of our people. And it is an important "• sanitary essential of 

 the home and farm," that the soil in the vicinity of a home 

 should be kept clean, and free from filth-pollution of every 

 kind. 



We cannot explain the immunity from disease that has 

 often been observed in families livinjj in such surroundinjjs 

 as have been described, except that Nature, by her chemical 

 processes, is constantly converting noxious elements into 

 new, harmless combinations, and, by solar influence and 

 plant-growth, so relieving the soil of impurities as to pre- 

 vent that degree of concentration of poisonous elements 

 which would breed disease and death (diffusing, and so 

 diluting, by atmospheric currents, the noisome, sickening, 

 gaseous exhalations of a filth-sodden, filth-polluted, ferment- 

 ing soil, as to destroy their power to injure) ; or else the 

 wonderful power of tolerance, resistance, and accommoda- 

 tion, when brought gradually under the influence of morbific 

 agencies possessed by the nerves, fluids, and tissues of our 

 bodily organization, protects the health and life. Fortunately, 

 these dirty, filth}'- conditions do not directly produce deadly 

 epidemic or infectious diseases : they furnish the nidor, — the 

 material for the multiplication and diffusion of that miasm 

 or germ, that unknown morbific agent specific in nature and 

 power, coming through the medium of air and water, and 

 of unknown origin, which must be added to cause " the pes- 

 tilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that 

 wasteth at noonday." 



The perfect house will not be built until the perfect archi- 

 tect, carpenter, mason, and plumber, work together in its 

 construction. Wall-paper, carpets, and upholstered furni- 

 ture will be condemned by the best maxims of sanitary 

 science. 



No house is complete in essential comforts, and arrange- 

 ments for personal cleanliness, without a bath-room, supplied 

 with hot and cold water, a bath-tub, wash-basin, and water- 

 closet. These should be of the simplest possible construc- 

 tion, avoiding all complicated patent contrivances, connected 

 with a thoroughly trapped and ventilated iron soil-pipe, well 

 and securely placed, which may receive the idnk-water, and 

 discharge outside of the house into a well-ventilated stone- 



