606 ANNUAL, KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



drains. It may be worth while for the housebuilder to satisfy him- 

 self of the character of the plumbing, as of the character of the mortar, 

 but compulsory inspection by public officials is hardly warranted 

 on the ground of a high degree of demonstrated danger to the public 

 health. It is certain, too, that the enforced installation of immensely 

 complicated and elaborate piping and trapping systems simply adds 

 to the cost of building without any compensating hygienic advan- 

 tages. The plumbing ordinances of our large cities often contain 

 inconsistencies and contradictions, what is required in one city 

 being sometimes forbidden in another. A revision and simplifica- 

 tion of municipal plumbing regulations, a minimizing of official 

 inspection, and especially an education of the public to the fact that 

 diphtheria, typhoid fever, and scarlet fever have never been definitely 

 traced to sewer air or bad plumbing are reform measures that might 

 release a considerable sum of public money for use in really profitable 

 lines of sanitary endeavor. 



In the matter of heating and ventilation enormous sums have 

 been spent and are being spent to renew the air in rooms and 

 public assembly halls and to introduce pure air in what has been 

 assumed to be necessary amounts. And yet if the work of Beu, 1 

 Heymann, Paul, Erclentz, Flugge, 2 Leonard Hill, and others means 

 anything, it demonstrates that the whole effect from bad air and 

 crowded rooms is due to heat and moisture and not to carbon dioxide 

 or to any poisonous excretions in expired air. When all the effects 

 of crowd poison upon a group of individuals in an experimentally 

 sealed chamber can be eliminated by rapidly whirling electric fans, 

 it is useless any longer to look upon carbon dioxide as a measure of 

 danger. If we recoginze that all the discomfort from breathing air 

 in a confined space is due to a disturbance of the thermal relations 

 of the body, the problem of ventilation becomes very different from 

 what has usually been supposed. In temperate climates, at all 

 events, it ought to be much simpler to provide for proper heat regula- 

 tion of the body than to warm a large volume of outside air and 

 introduce it into a building continuously or at stated intervals. It 

 may well be asked whether the elaborate legal regulations governing 

 the supply of air and the cubic feet of bedroom space have a real 

 basis in scientfic knowledge. If overheating, moisture content, and 

 stagnation of the air are the chief things to be avoided, may this 

 end not be reached more effectively and less expensively than by 

 present methods ? 



One conspicuous function at present required of or voluntarily 

 exercised by health departments is the practice of terminal disinfec- 

 tion after cases of infectious disease. This has come to play a large 



i Zeitschr. Hyg., 1893, vol. 14, p. 64. * Zeitsclir. Hyg., 1905, vol. 49, p. 363. 



