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Page 9
Now, suppose all such precautions have been disregarded. Suppose, as is
most usual, that the well is dug near the kitchen-door,--probably between
kitchen and barn; the drain, if there is a drain from the kitchen, pouring
out the dirty water of wash-day and all other days, which sinks through
the ground, and acts as feeder to the waiting well. Suppose the
manure-pile in the barnyard also sends down its supply, and the privies
contribute theirs. The water may be unchanged in color or odor: yet none
the less you are drinking a foul and horrible poison; slow in action, it
is true, but making you ready for diphtheria and typhoid-fever, and
consumption, and other nameless ills. It is so easy to doubt or set aside
all this, that I give one case as illustration and warning of all the
evils enumerated above.
The State Board of Health for Massachusetts has long busied itself with
researches on all these points, and the case mentioned is in one of their
reports. The house described is one in Hadley, built by a clergyman. "It
was provided with an open well and sink-drain, with its deposit-box in
close proximity thereto, affording facility to discharge its gases in the
well as the most convenient place. The cellar was used, as country cellars
commonly are, for the storage of provisions of every kind, and the
windows were never opened. The only escape for the soil-moisture and
ground-air, except that which was absorbed by the drinking-water, was
through the crevices of the floors into the rooms above. After a few
months' residence in the house, the clergyman's wife died of fever. He
soon married again; and the second wife also died of fever, within a year
from the time of marriage. His children were sick. He occupied the house
about two years. The wife of his successor was soon taken ill, and barely
escaped with her life. A physician then took the house. He married, and
his wife soon after died of fever. Another physician took the house, and
within a few months came near dying of erysipelas. He deserved it. The
house, meanwhile, received no treatment; the doctors, according to their
usual wont, even in their own families, were satisfied to deal with the
consequences, and leave the causes to do their worst.
"Next after the doctors, a school-teacher took the house, and made a few
changes, for convenience apparently, for substantially it remained the
same; for he, too, escaped as by the skin of his teeth. Finally, after the
foreclosure of many lives, the sickness and fatality of the property
became so marked, that it became unsalable. When at last sold, every sort
of prediction was made as to the risk of occupancy; but, by a thorough
attention to sanitary conditions, no such risks have been encountered."
These deaths were suicides,--ignorant ones, it is true, not one stopping
to think what causes lay at the bottom of such "mysterious dispensations."
But, just as surely as corn gives a crop from the seed sown, so surely
typhoid fever and diphtheria follow bad drainage or the drinking of
impure water.
Boiling such water destroys the germs of disease; but neither boiled water
nor boiled germs are pleasant drinking.
If means are too narrow to admit of the expense attendant upon making a
drain long enough and tight enough to carry off all refuse water to a safe
distance from the house, then adopt another plan. Remember that to throw
dirty water on the ground near a well, is as deliberate poisoning as if
you threw arsenic in the well itself. Have a large tub or barrel standing
on a wheelbarrow or small hand-cart; and into this pour every drop of
dirty water, wheeling it away to orchard or garden, where it will enrich
the soil, which will transform it, and return it to you, not in disease,
but in fruit and vegetables. Also see that the well has a roof, and, if
possible, a lattice-work about it, that all leaves and flying dirt may be
prevented from falling into it. You do not want your water to be a
solution or tincture of dead leaves, dead frogs and insects, or stray mice
or kittens; and this it must be, now and again, if not covered
sufficiently to exclude such chances, _though not the air_, which must be
given free access to it.
As to hard and soft water, the latter is always most desirable, as soft
water extracts the flavor of tea and coffee far better than hard, and is
also better for all cooking and washing purposes. Hard water results from
a superabundance of lime; and this lime "cakes" on the bottom of
tea-kettles, curdles soap, and clings to every thing boiled in it, from
clothes to meat and vegetables (which last are always more tender if
cooked in soft water; though, if it be too soft, they are apt to boil to a
porridge).
Washing-soda or borax will soften hard water, and make it better for all
household purposes; but rain-water, even if not desired for drinking, will
be found better than any softened by artificial means.
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