FARMERS HOUSES. 329 



The lower floor of every country house should be on the same level, for every 

 step upward taken by domestics and women m the family, is not only a useless* 

 expenditure of strength, (and a large portion of it, too, when it is considered 

 how many times a day the cook and housemaid and the wives and daughters 

 who do the household work must go in and out, and pass and repass from one 

 room to another,) but it is physiologically a great strain upon those internal 

 organs which are peculiar to the sex ; and when too much of it is done, diseases 

 arc every day induced which are to embitter the whole after existence. It is 

 very easy to wink the eye — an inappreciable effort — but if a man attempts to 

 do it a hundred times in succession, its repetition becomes a painful effort. It 

 is very easy to step up a step or two, but the strongest will pant and blow if a 

 hundred have to be gone up as briskly as an ordinary cook steps about. 



It may be said that the objection does not apply because only one step is 

 taken at a time ; but it must be remembered that those who do housework almost 

 always have something in hand — a bucket of water, a pile of plates, an armful 

 of wood, a scuttle of coal, etc. — and these must be raised that one step, besides 

 the body of the person, altogether weighing between one and two hundred 

 pounds. A certain amount of strength is expended in this unnecessary effort, 

 and however small it is, each repetition of it is that much taken from the store 

 of strength with which the person arose in the morning. A purse containing a 

 hundred dollars is as much depleted by taking out a dollar at a time until fifty 

 are withdrawn, as if the whole fifty were extracted at once. 



The kitchen should, as far as practicable, be central to the whole house, 

 having the dining-room on one side, the wood-house, and the place for meats, 

 milk, and vegetables on another, unless these are all kept in the cellar, located 

 as previously advised. If, however, the dairy is an important item about the 

 farm — that is, if it is intended as a source of income, it should be arranged by 

 all means to be on the side of a hill or rising ground, if possible, over a spring, 

 otherwise in such a way that a natural stream should flow through it, or that 

 the surplus water of the well, or spring, or cistern should do so ; but by all 

 means let the dairy be approached from the kitchen by a raised gravel walk, 

 with a view to have it as dry as possible at all seasons, for this walk must be 

 passed over many times a day, and if not dry it dampens the feet and thus en- 

 dangers the health. 



WATER CONVEXIENCES. 



If water is not supplied by artificial means, so as to come into the kitchen 

 by pipes and a faucet, it should be arranged to have the Avell or cistern or 

 spring deliver its supply in an apartment immediately adjoining the kitchen, 

 on the same level, and without going outside of the house. It cannot be 

 truthfully denied that multitudes of women lose health and life itself every 

 year by having to step out from the dry warm floor of the kitchen upon the 

 cold stones and wet path outside, going to the spring, wood-yard, and "smoke- 

 house." And, with the experiences and harrowing narr/itions which daily 

 come to physicians from this direction, that farmer is criminally remiss who, 

 in building a new house or reconstructing an old one, does not arrange to have 

 a dry and level floor for those who do the cooking, washing, and general house- 

 work of the flimily, so as to make dairy, cellar, wood-house, water-closets, and 

 smoke-house easily accessible by a dry pathway. 



PRIVIES AND WATER-CLOSETS. 



The location of these in connexion with a family residence has an important 

 bearing on the health of any family, or a greater influence on the destiny of 

 many than would be supposed by other than a medical practitioner, from the 

 operation of a single law of the animal economy in connexion with a fact to be 

 afterwards stated, which no observant person can truthfully deny. It is of 



