Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1870 — Drains and Cellars. [ARTICLE]

Drains and Cellars.

BY A PHYSICIAN.

If there is any one thing more than another, about a farmer’s house, which should'in the spring time be attended to, it is the cleaning out of all the drains, the cellar, and evi ry place where animal or vegetable matter can accumulate and decay. ~~ ——- - , ■ _ Trie drain leading awav the slops from the kitchen, the drain of the cellar and the cellar itself if it has been the receptacle of stores for the winter, are not unfrequently the source of gaseous emanations that induce most formidable and fatal diseases in the household. It is both filthy and disgusting to good taste to allow these places to go uncleaned until far into the summer, and something every man ought to be ashamed of, if there was no higher reason. But this consideration amounts to nothing compared with that which relates to the effect on the health of those who live near enough to be influenced by such neglect. One of the most deadly poisonous gases has its chief origin in the region of farmers’houses, from just such sources ; places where something can decay. This gas is nilphureted hydrogen ; sewers, cesspools and privies are the homes of its growth. An atmosphere containing’one part of this gas to eight hundred, will kill birdsat once ; one part in every three hundred is destructive to dogs in a shopt time; in an atmosphere with one part in every hun dred and fifty, a horse has been found to die in a little while, and a little over one per cent of it is destructive to some plants Man is able to breathe one per cent of this gas, but he at once feels its injury, and no one has had the fortitude to inhale, it for more than a few minutes at a time ; to abide where one per cent, must be breathed for any considerable period would surely be death. These facts are the results of careful experiments by scientific men. These demonstrate how easy it is to have an element floating in the air which is a rank poison, and purely as the result of negligence or thoughtlessness. The family get sick, have typhoid fever, several members Ccrhaps in succession, and the climate is lamed for Insalubrity, when only the people themselves are at fault. Many housekeepers are perplexed because the paint—common white paint—with which their houses are embellished, gets so easily and quickly tarnished, it turns yellow soon after being put on. The paint is condemneilas an inferior article, and any substitute of another composition which will not tarnish is hailed as a new fortune. The paint turns yellow by union of its lead with the sulphur of its toxic gas, making a sulphide of lead which is of a dark color; hence the alteration in the hueJof casings and doors. The rapidity wbh which the w< od-work changes its light shade to a dark one, is just the pace at which the stock of life-force of those who bnathe the air in the house is being eaten away; their color, meanwhile is changing from a rosy freshness to a pale and weary cast. Purify the atmosphere, and the dwelling aud dwellers alike, will retain their beauty and appearance of health. Another matter which ought to be most carefully looked after is the well, whence the water for the house is procured. During the summer, a great quantity of dust and fine dirt falls into it, but they are not always of so deleterious a character as what gets in during the spring. If dirt sifts into the well it seldom does injury tor pure earth and filth are different things.

In winter, large piles of garfiage are not un'requeqtly accumulated near the well, which in solution may in part flow into the water in the spring; then some drain may flow not far from it, a privy may be near by, or a pig stye and a barnyard. As the earth softens under the vernal sun, it is not a difficult thing for these pestilential juices to percolate their way many feet through the soil to the well, especially when the latter is sunk in so soft and battery a soil and one so full at seasons with surface-water as that in, Northern Illinois. When the drinking water gets cqjitami- i nated with any of these substances there j is not the slightest surety of health on the part of those who take it ; typhoid, fever and similar diseases arc its natural i fruits, and ten thousand cases of these’ deeply dire maladies can be directly i traced to such pollutions—usually from . some privy or barnyard. This tact has been proven by ample experiment and observation by men who have made it a i life study. Good health and poison in the air we breathe, or dissolved in the water we drink, are incompatible.— Prairie Farmer.