9G8 THE AMERICAN FARMER. 



homes are meant those outside of, and removed from large towns, in places remote from the 

 influences of overcrowding and the atmospheric contaminations due to such causes, as well as 

 the debris produced by large bodies of people. There are two classes of these homes: first, 

 those which stand alone and separate from other abodes; second, those which are more or 

 less connected with others in towns of small size. There are no more suggestive thoughts 

 than such as are connected with these abodes, and particularly those of the first class. They 

 are the peculiar waymarks of history ; these old houses are to our social life what the broken 

 temples of Italy are to art, what the geologic rocks and strata are to the history of the earth. 

 One can read in them the successive eras and periods of that struggle for life through 

 which the inhabitants of the various sections of our country have gone. The early progress 

 of our social evolution can be traced as plainly as any geologic record at the outside in the 

 scattered heaps of stones or mounds of earth, and a little later in the huge remnants of old 

 chimney stacks, and still later in the broken frame-work, or again, further on, in the lonely, 

 untenanted old house, tottering and ready to fall; or each period is illustrated in some single 

 old manor house, still inhabited, which has stood strong against the ravages of the years. 

 Here dwelt our fathers in their stern simplicity, and here abide their children now, in the 

 abodes of a more advanced and complicated method of life, and their history, as related to 

 health, may be stated concisely as follows: The early homes were primitive; consequently 

 they suffered from the absence of necessary sanitary conditions. The homes of to-day, on 

 the other hand, suffer in a twofold way on the one side from the same absence of sanitary 

 requisites, and on the other from the improper adaptation to the comforts of a modern civili 

 zation. I propose to take up and consider the natural and artificial causes of disease in the 

 country in the following order: those that arise in air and water, those that are due to food 

 and clothing, to habitations and to occupation. 



Air. The atmosphere, the world over, has essentially the same constituents, but it 

 varies in different localities in meteorological conditions; local causes also introduce certain 

 extraneous matters. It is these two conditions which exercise an influence upon public 

 health. In many localities the variation in the meteorological conditions of the atmosphere 

 are comparatively large and rapid. These atmospheric elements exert an influence varying 

 according to situation and exposure, or proximity to the Gulf Stream and sea-coast. For 

 instance, what along the coast in winter is a fall of ram, a few miles back turns to a fall of 

 snow, which remains more or less constant. A wind which, upon a high and exposed 

 situation, pursues a direct and steady sweeping current, when it reaches a locality circum 

 scribed by hills, whirls and eddies around in irregular waves and with broken force. On the 

 sea-coast the atmosphere may be loaded with moisture, while inland it is dry. Any one who 

 has happened to ride in the country just at dusk, cannot have failed to note the diverse 

 qualities of the air through which he passes. If, for instance, he descends abruptly from 

 moderately high ground, and travels along the lower meadow lands, through which, it may 

 be, runs a small stream conditions constantly met with in many parts of the country he 

 will at once observe a peculiar chill in the air and a heaviness which penetrates to the skin, 

 so sudden is the change. These conditions must of course exercise an influence upon the 

 health of those who are subjected to them. They may be compared with certain kinds of 

 clothing which vary in texture and thickness, and so in the sensations which they produce. 

 These strata of the air envelop the body, and cause a sense of warmth or a chill, an enlivening 

 or depressing influence, according as they are wet or dry, or warm or moist. Of those 

 diseases which are due in part to the natural conditions of the atmosphere, consumption 

 is to bo particularly named ; this is caused by the sudden and large variations which have been 

 named, and without doubt it would be found, upon investigation, that the low grounds 

 which have been alluded to predispose to the disease. It also occurs to a greater extent upon 

 the sea-coast, and in localities situated between adjoining hills. 



So, too, catarrhal and bronchial diseases and rheumatism, and also malarial and typhoid 

 diseases, are produced by these circumscribed localities. Pneumonia is another disease 

 especially to be noted as due to atmospheric causes, and it sometimes sweeps as an 

 epidemic over a large area of country. Mr. Haiviland, a recent English writer, states that 

 valleys shut in with stagnant air and retentive soil productive of humidity, predispose to 

 rheumatism and its frequent concomitant, heart disease, and the more so when the population 

 are ill-clad and exposed to the weather. Then there are other elements which pervade the 

 air as poisons and sweep over it with varying degrees of virulence, and are made manifest in 

 epidemics of diphtheria, influenzas, and eruptive diseases, and in that hitherto insidious and 

 unexplainable influence named malaria, which has been for the last few years gradually 



