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inoffensively, as by a flow of water. To ensure the perfection of this
method such flow should be continuous. The quantity of water, it may
be observed, is not so important as the continuity of flow: this is readily
understood when we consider the adhesive nature of the substances to be
removed, which may be floated away by a small amount of water, but
which require repeated flushings of large bodies of water to wash them
away.
Waterclosets.—To ensure general habits of cleanliness amongst the
mass of the people, it is first necessary to furnish them with convenient
appliances to assist them in the formation of such habits. It is, therefore,
desirable that waterclosets should be constructed as simple, and
demanding the exercise of as little care and trouble, as possible (half the
people, of all classes, find it too much trouble to pull a handle !) On
this account, also, it would appear desirable that the flow of water should
be removed from individual control. If the town possessed an unlimited
supply, or rather the adaptation of the unlimited supply which it possesses
for such purposes, the means of house drainage could be perfected
with the greatest simplicity, economy, and ease.
Ventilation of Houses.—That a supply of air in certain amount is the
most immediately urgent necessity of life, is universally known; but it is
much to be regretted that it is not generally understood, that the same
volume of air which has been once respired is not only unfit for further
use, but that it has acquired noxious qualities, and, consequently, that the
constant renewal of such supply is as imperatively necessary. The necessity
for this renewal of the air we breathe arises in consequence of the
chemical changes which are effected in it by the process of respiration,
which removes a certain portion of oxygen necessary for carrying on the
vital processes, and replaces it by a corresponding amount of carbonic acid
gas (estimated at 32 cubic inches in a minute). The effect of this gas on
the system is that of a powerful narcotic, destroying life when present in
an atmosphere to the extent of 10 per cent., and in smaller quantities
depressing to a greater or less extent the brain and nervous system. Air
containing 1 per cent, cannot be breathed for any length of time with
impunity.*
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that scrofula, atrophy, and their
allied affections, and lung diseases, especially consumption, should so
largely attack those whose lungs are supplied with an impure air for at
least eight hours out of the twenty-four, or that any lurking contagion
should seize upon those whose systems must be so frequently depressed
below that point at which the body in health is capable of resisting
noxious influences. Nor can there be any doubt of the truth of the
observation of an eminent writer, that much drunkenness is attributable to
the cerebral exhaustion dependent on imperfect aeration of the blood from
this cause, there being an instinctive, and, therefore, urgent craving for
alcoholic stimuli, which are found to give temporary relief to the feeling
of exhaustion which is experienced. The morning headaches, and the
sense of weariness alter due allowance of sleep, which are so often felt,
* Hence it requires but little abstraction of mind to realize the fact, that a man confined
in a room however large, and all access of air prevented, will in a given time be as
surtly, although more slowly, suffocated, as if the air were at once entirely removed.