Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1886-08-02
HOW TO MAKE A PLACE
UNHEALTHFUL.

Conditions of filth abound every
where, which may be utilized for the
purpose of making a place unhealth
full. ALI households furnish organic
refuse in great abundance, and it re-
quires no effort, nor even intelli-
gence, to so dispose of it as to pro-
duce the maximum amount of health
destroying poisons. Fortunately, in
resisting the encroachments of san
itarians, it is good deal easier, and
much more in accordance with the
inclinations of human laziness, to
leave decaying vegetables in the cell
lar all summer than to remove them
to distant compost heap. The eel
lar windows should be closed to keep
out the wind and rain, and cold. This
valuable source of making your hab-
itation unhealthful may be increased
by neglecting to dram the site. If
in season of rain the cellar occa-
slonally half fills with water, and rot
ting potatoes, turnips, and cabbages
float around in it, especially if you
have to wade in it to get to the but
ter tub, milk pans, and pork barrel,
the means of unheathfulness will be
greatly improved, although not yet
perfected.
If you live in town, you can have
a big, untrapped wooden box or po-
rous cement pipe run from six or
eight inches above the bottom Of the
cellar TO an unclean brick sewer in
the street, through which great vol
umes of putrefective gas, laden with
invisible things called bacteria. per-
haps with the germs of contagious
disease from neighboring premises,
can freely enter, thereto mingle with
the malaria already formed, and flow
up through all the living-rooms of
your habitation. In the winter, bank
up your house, and allow no portion
of the foul gas to escape into outer
all, or any pure air from without to
get in. Manure is good material
for such purpose. The fires start
ed when the cold weather comes will
make the house itself act as fiue to
draw upward the poisonous exhala-
tions from the bottom. Only one
thing more is wanting to make the
arrangement complete: if you live
in town, you can have an unventilat-
ed water closet in some dark, interior
part of the house, with imperfectly
jointed or cracked soil.pipe, the sui
phurated and carburated hydrogen
gas from which will give the finish
ing flavor to the atmosphere of your
dwelling.
Having thus secured air best adapt
ed to make your home unhealthful,
you should also provide an abun-
dance of commercially unwholesome
water. The task is not a difficult
opa. ~ roou;roc M oo;onti6o knou,l
edge and not an unusual amount of
intellect. If you live in a city, be
sure and help elect officers who will
take the public water supply from
source near by, and probably pollut-
ed with sewerage, in order to save a
little expense. If you live in the
country, you can make group of
the barn-yard, hog-pen, dog-kennel,
and clubhouse, with the well in the Gen.
ter. Never remove the manure from
outhouses. Dig great hole in the
ground for the privy vault, and in 1t
treasure up the vilest excIeta for
years. If the vault at length be-
comes full, throw little dirt over it
and dig another hole. Through the
porous earth the putrescent mass will
slowly drain to the we'll, in which
hangs ssthe old oaken bucket
1t would probably he superfuous
to give any directions how to add un-
wholesome food to impure water and
foul air. If under such combined in
fuences, you and your family become
sick with malarial, typho-nalarial
or typhoid fever, diphtheria, dysen-
terry, or other filthy disease, and your
doctor should look around your prem
ises for the cause, admonish him that
he has been sent for to give medicine
and to cure, and not to meddle with
private affairs and question Provi-
dence. The kitchen slops throw on
to the ground under the sick-room
window, there putrefying in the sum-
mer sun, may subject you to the tenn
porary inconvenience of closing the
window to shut out the rank odor and
the green flies, already ominous of
the inch-long banqueters that, sooner
or later, feast on the remains of all.
A stink is Natures emphatic and
rather frank opinion of filth; but
never mind her voice, for she may he
in collusion with the ungenerate SAN
itarian. When your habitation is
desolate with repeated funerals, the
good preacher may take as his text,
sMy people perish for want of knowl-
edge;' but your neighbors, in kind
Iy remembrance, will effectively warn
him to stick TO the comforting doc