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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



have every fixture in it flushed at least once a week (once in three 

 days is better), and, if it be necessary to move into a house which 

 has been for some time unoccupied, and where you are not sure 

 that these precautions have been observed, then thorough cleans- 

 ing with cloths wetted with disinfectant solutions should be em- 

 ployed as a matter of ordinary prudence, and this should be ap- 

 plied to every exposed surface. 



If the system of house-drainage is properly arranged, and the 

 plans above referred to are at hand, its inspection is a simple 

 matter, and should be made at least once in three years. 



Finally, the art of plumbing is not to be learned from books 

 or magazine articles. A man may be M. D., D. D., or LL. D., and 

 be densely ignorant about house-drainage, or as to whether that 

 of his own house is in good condition or not. Every housekeeper 

 ought to be familiar with the pipe plans for her own house, and 

 know just how to turn the water off from any given riser ; be- 

 yond that, the truest wisdom is to be aware of one's own igno- 

 rance, and to get skilled advice whenever advice is needed. 



TOWN-LIFE AS A CAUSE OF DEGENERACY.* 



By G. B. BAEEON, M. D. 



IT may be readily supposed that the conditions of life and their 

 general surroundings must largely influence and materially 

 affect the physical or constitutional characteristics of town-dwell- 

 ers. At the onset, then, I venture to advance the proposition that 

 the "vital force" of the town -dweller is inferior to the "vital 

 force " of the countryman. The evidence of this is to be found in 

 a variety of ways. The general unfitness and incapability of the 

 dwellers in our large hives of industry to undergo continued vio- 

 lent exertion, or to sustain long endurance of fatigue, is a fact 

 requiring little evidence to establish ; nor can they tolerate the 

 withdrawal of food under sustained physical effort for any pro- 

 longed period as compared with the dwellers in rural districts. It 

 may be afiirmed also that, through the various factors at work 

 night and day upon the constitution of the poorer class of town- 

 dwellers, various forms of disease are developed, of which pulmo- 

 nary consumption is the most familiar, and which is doing its 

 fatal work in a lavish and unerring fashion. Thus it may be con- 

 ceded as an established fact that the townsman is, on the whole, 

 constitutionally dwarfed in tone, and his life, man for man, short- 

 er, weaker, and more uncertain than the countryman's. I hold 

 the opinion that the deterioration is more in physique, as implied 



* Abstract of a paper read at the British Association Meeting, Bath. 



