HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY RESIDENCES. 63 



he was applied to as an undertaker on behalf of that tenant or somt 

 member or his family within a twelve-month from the date of occu- 

 pation, lie added, that he himself (the house agent) would be sor- 

 ry to live in any house "that had not been bated by six summer 

 suns." Whether this amount of baking is absolutely required is a 

 question for doctors and architects to decide ; but there can be no 

 doubt whatever that a want of caution in this respect leads occasion- 

 ally to the most lamentable consequence^. An instance in point will 

 be found in the case of Peabody's Buildings, mentioned in the an- 

 nual report of the health officer for Southwark, England, lately 

 printed. It seems that these buildings have a death-rate of 23 

 m 1,000 persons living, or 1 in 43. In other metropolitan 

 model buildings the death-rate only averages 17 per 1000. The less 

 favorable state of health prevailing in Peabody's Buildings is 

 attributed to their being too soon occupied after construction, many 

 of the ground floors having been found to be still very damp some 

 months after the buildings were inhabited. 



We have purposely made these introductory observations as 

 practical as they are brief. While it is true that not many of us 

 can control the situation and all the surroundings of our dwellings, 

 yet we can all do something, and surely we are bound to do all that 

 we can, toward mitigating, if we cannot entirely remove, those 

 baleful influences of disease and death by which so many families, 

 In this country, are surrounded. 



UNHEALTHFUL RESIDENCES. 



One-third of your time is spent in bed and much more than that within 

 the walls of your residence. No further argument need be advanced to 

 prove the importance of having our houses conducive to health and not 

 productive of disease. Because the punishment does not immediately 

 follow after the offense people become indifferent about the unhealth- 

 f ulness of their houses, but they may rest assured that nature will exact 

 the due for natural law violated. Among the most common faults that 

 make a home an influence to produce sickness, rheumatism, neuralgia, 

 etc. , may be mentioned low ceilings ; doors without transoms ; too 

 small bed rooms without suitable provision for ventilation; rooms that 

 the sun never enters, but where the doctors most always do enter ; cel- 

 lars where foul air enters because of lack of ventilation, to poison those 

 who go down there, poison the food kept there, and send poisonous 

 gases up through the house ; cesspools and closets near tide house which 

 also at times send their noxious gases into the houses to do their silent 

 mischief ; unhealthf ul surroundings caused by location of house in a hol- 

 low. All these cause enormous suffering through disease and ailments 

 of which they are direct preventable causes, and hundreds of millions of 

 dollars paid unnecessarily to doctors and to druggists. It should be 

 any one's first aim to secure healthful conditions in and about his home. 



