1884.] 
The Health Exhibition. 
353 
Among gymnastic appliances we may mention Zander’s 
arrangements for the movement-cure, as in successful use in 
the well-known establishment in Soho Square. 
Certain model-houses were not complete at the time of 
oui visit. In this important sphere we have still very much, 
if not to learn, yet to put in practice. So long as the short 
building-leases customary in London are tolerated, and so 
long as a number of persons can squeeze themselves in 
between the land-owner and the tenant, so long will “jerry- 
work in building prevail, and even increase. 
It is generally owned that, as far as a picturesque effeCt 
is concerned, our domestic architecture has greatly fallen off 
since the days of good Queen Bess. But it is sometimes 
asserted that, as far as healthiness is concerned, it has as 
distinctly improved. This is a flattering delusion. We 
have, indeed, abolished domestic cesspools ; but their modern 
substitute, the water-closet, is often so carelessly constructed 
that it may be called an arrangement for supplying to every 
house sewer-gases and the microbia which they hold in sus- 
pension. We have sewers, which the olden time had not ; 
but they are brought right under the floor of our dwelling- 
rooms, and between their imperfeCt and leaky surfaces and 
our noses there is sometimes merely the flooring. Nay, it 
even happens that the soil from our water-closets and the 
slops from our sinks do not find their way completely into 
the main sewei, but escape through defective connections 
and stagnate about the foundations. In such cases the abo- 
lition of the cesspool is merely a change of names, not of 
things. 
Again, look at the walls dividing room from room. In the 
days of old they were built of brick and mortar ; now they 
are merely hollow shells of lath and plaster, affording a 
secure letieat and breeding-place for cockroaches, mice, and 
rats, where the excreta of these vermin and portions of food 
which they carry off accumulate and decompose, and where 
disinfectants and ventilation are alike inapplicable. 
Again, how is mortar — at least as used by the London 
building speculator composed at present ? Not as it used 
to be, and as it ought, of sand and lime. In any suburban 
legion the suiface-soil it may be that of a recent market- 
garden, highly manured— is made to do duty for the former ! 
What of the beams, the flooring, and other wood-work in 
the semi-detached villas and “ desirable residences ” adver- 
tised as to be let or sold ? Is it fresh, wholesome timber 
from Norway or Canada ? No ; houses in the slums, which 
may have been inhabited by successive generations of diseased 
