The New York herald., 1874-11-20
Sanitary Reform and Winter Relief
for tho Metropolitan Poor.

for tho Metropolitan Poor.
The problem of winter relief for the poor,
now so anxiously discussed. is making strong
demands upon the attention Of the public and
calls for stringent sanitary reforms on the
metropolitan authorities. The winter cpl
denies, more than aught else, invest the suf-
ferings of the poverty stricken with their
greatest terror. and any measures for their
prevention blunt the tooth Of hunger and
give courage to the needy to endure the ills
of this season. In the recent sanitary in
quiries as to the causes of the diphtheria
scourge many have concluded that the
disease is due to ''made land'' and "defective
drainage" and they point to the network of
small streams once running through New
York but now filled up and built over. This
conclusion is evidently groundless, for the
cause and effect are disproportioned. The
districting Of New York and the mapping of
its scourged sections may be very useful.
But the causes of disease are not found
so much in soil conditions as in the domestic
arrangements and economy of tho different
districts.
The atmospheric conditions of New York at
all seasons are peculiarly favorable, and its
climatology is by no means inviting to the
epidemic. While much may be done by sew
erage and street cleaning to mitigate and
minimize disease common sense and sound
philosophy alike point to the interiors of its
tenement dwellings as the hotbeds Of the pre-
vailing pestilence. Let us glance at one Of
the most prolific sources Of winter sickness
and misery among the poor.
The contamination Of indoor air, which
every poor family must breathe nearly twenty
tour hours in the day, is the great evil to be
abated. This contamination is due partly to
the wretched and crude system of house and
sewer pipes and drains, from which the sewer
gas poison ceaselessly escapes. Perhaps the
only remedy for this is the adoption of the
Dutch pneumatic sewer system in those dis
tricts crowded with tenements, which city
statistics prove are the haunts of pestilence.
But, aside from this, o greater and more
deadly evil abounds in the matter of house
heating, which has been largely over
looked in the construction Of homes for the
poor. 1t is a much ignored fact that the heat
felt by the human body is not the actual heat
registered by the ordinary thermometer but
that indicated by the wet bulb thermometer,
OF that attending evaporation from the hu-
man body. Moist air is much better con-
ductor of heat than dry air, and is, in itself,
powerful means Of arresting the radiation
from the skin and keeping the body at
healthy temperature By evaporating pure
water on our house heaters and stoves the air Of
the house diffuses heat more equally, and with
much less fuel consumed the sensible heat of
the rooms is increased The well-known avid
ity of hot air for moisture explains the insa-
lubrity of crowded and dry heated dwellings.
During severely cold weather in our ATTITUDES
the out-of-door atmosphere has capacity for
about 1.30 grains OF water in the shape of
vapor. Introduced into our houses and stove
heated to sixty degrees Fahrenheit its capa-
city for vapor is increased five or six times,
and it is Unsuitable till 1t abstracts so much
from any sources with which it may come
in contact. In the absence of pure vapor
indoors, evaporated from the heating appar-
atus, it absorbs the required quantity
from the human body, or from any vegetable
and animal substances within reach, however
noxious they may be; and this poisoned vapor
thus circulated must be again and again re-
! brsathed. There can be no question that TO