farmers' houses. 319 



The reasons for the above exemptions are here shortly recapitulated : 



First. Miasm does not cross a wide, rapid stream. 



Second. Miasm is absorbed by thick, living, luxuriant foliage. 



Third. Miasm cannot travel against the wind. 



Fourth. Miasm cannot ascend a high, steep hill. 



There is no mystery in these variations, nor any complexity, when the laws 

 of miasm are thoroughly understood. 



It will be practically useful for the young farmer, in a pecuniary point of 

 view, to understand, further, that in one year a house on the banks of a mill- 

 pond or sluggish stream may be visited with sickness ; the very next year that 

 same house may be exempt, because it is a very cold summer ; the third year 

 it will escape, because it is a very hot summer ; the fourth year it will be a 

 very healthful habitation, because it has been a very wet summer. Why these 

 variations 1 



First. Miasm cannot form, or if it does, cannot rise through a foot or two of 

 depth of water, and the wet summer kept the pond covered. 



Second. The hot summer dried the bed of the pond to dust, and there can 

 be no miasm without dampness. 



Third. The cold summer did not give the degree of heat necessary to the 

 generation of miasm — that is, eighty degrees of Fahrenheit. 



These principles fully explain the apparent mystery of the epidemics in Xew 

 Orleans, already refen-ed to in the first part of tliis paper. 



An illustration of the laws of miasm, Avhich the writer will never forget, was 

 had during a cholera summer in Boston, under the following circumstances : 

 T he city authorities inaugurated a most perfect system of cleanliness. Efforts 

 were made to procure the services of the most reliable men to visit eveiy house 

 from cellar to garret, and compel the removal of everything which could have 

 even a remote tendency to invite the fearful scourge. The results were ad- 

 mirable ; there was not a single case of cholera, except in a very restricted dis- 

 trict ; in fact, only one family was attacked. A more special examination was 

 instituted, when there was found, in a remote corner of the cellar, a large pile 

 of the accumulations of bad housekeeping for years, and this was in a state of 

 putridity. On its removal, and the plentiful use of the most powerful disin- 

 fectants, the disease at once disappeared, and did not return. 



CELLARS IN DWELLING-HOUSES. 



With a fact like the above staring one -in the face, and in connexion with 

 another, that farmers generally make their cellars the winter and summer re- 

 ceptacles of every variety of vegetables and fruits, more or less of which are 

 put away in a bruised, rotted, or unripe condition, and thus speedily become 

 putrid by fermentation without the aid of much heat, it is apparent that the?e 

 gases are constantly ascending, and must unavoidably impregnate every room 

 in the house with a vitiated and unwholesome atmosphere ; and in consequence 

 of another known fact, and unfortunately almost universal, that the cellar, 

 being convenient and " out of sight" of visitors, is made the receptacle of all 

 that is old and unseemly, as well as of kitchen offal, by the laziness of bad 

 housekeepers or unprincipled servants. For these considerations, it is clear 

 that it would be better if no cellar should be built under that part of a house 

 which is to be occupied as a place to eat and sleep and live in, whether in 

 town or country. But, as in the country, the cellar is regarded as an indis- 

 pensable part of the house, the greatest precaution should be exercised to in- 

 sure cleanliness and pure air with ventilation, preventing it from becoming 

 the fruitful source of sickness and suffering. 



In a family in one of the healthiest villages of Massachusetts a few years 

 ago the father and three children died of an obstinate slow fever, and the 

 mother and two other children were " hard at death's door" for weeks. Before 



