DRAINAGE AND WATER-SUPPLY.
Air and sunshine having been assured for all parts of the house in daily
use, the next question must be an unfailing and full supply of pure water.
"Dig a well, or build near a spring," say the builders; and the well is
dug, or the spring tapped, under the general supposition that water is
clean and pure, simply because it is water, while the surroundings of
either spring or well are unnoticed. Drainage is so comparatively new a
question, that only the most enlightened portions of the country consider
its bearings; and the large majority of people all over the land not only
do not know the interests involved in it, but would resent as a personal
slight any hint that their own water-supply might be affected by deficient
drainage.
Pure water is simply oxygen and hydrogen, eight-ninths being oxygen and
but one-ninth hydrogen; the latter gas, if pure, having, like oxygen,
neither taste nor smell. Rain-water is the purest type; and, if collected
in open vessels as it falls, is necessarily free from any possible taint
(except at the very first of a rain, when it washes down considerable
floating impurity from the atmosphere, especially in cities). This mode
being for obvious reasons impracticable, cisterns are made, and rain
conducted to them through pipes leading from the roof. The water has thus
taken up all the dust, soot, and other impurities found upon the roof,
and, unless filtered, can not be considered desirable drink. The best
cistern will include a filter of some sort, and this is accomplished in
two ways. Either the cistern is divided into two parts, the water being
received on one side, and allowed to slowly filter through a wall of
porous brick, regarded by many as an amply sufficient means of
purification; or a more elaborate form is used, the division in such case
being into upper and under compartments, the upper one containing the
usual filter of iron, charcoal, sponge, and gravel or sand. If this water
has a free current of air passing over it, it will acquire more sparkle
and character; but as a rule it is flat and unpleasant in flavor, being
entirely destitute of the earthy salts and the carbonic-acid gas to be
found in the best river or spring water.
Distilled water comes next in purity, and is, in fact, identical in
character with rain-water; the latter being merely steam, condensed into
rain in the great alembic of the sky. But both have the curious property
of taking up and dissolving _lead_ wherever they find it; and it is for
this reason that lead pipes as leaders from or to cisterns should _never_
be allowed, unless lined with some other metal.
The most refreshing as well as most wholesome water is river or spring
water, perfectly filtered so that no possible impurity can remain. It is
then soft and clear; has sufficient air and carbonic acid to make it
refreshing, and enough earthy salts to prevent its taking up lead, and so
becoming poisonous. River-water for daily use of course requires a system
of pipes, and in small places is practically unavailable; so that wells
are likely, in such case, to be the chief source of supply. Such water
will of course be spring-water, with the characteristics of the soil
through which it rises. If the well be shallow, and fed by surface
springs, all impurities of the soil will be found in it; and thus to _dig
deep_ becomes essential, for many reasons. Dr. Parker of England, in some
papers on practical hygiene, gives a clear and easily understood statement
of some causes affecting the purity of well-water.
"A well drains an extent of ground around it, in the shape of an inverted
cone, which is in proportion to its own depth and the looseness of the
soil. In very loose soils a well of sixty or eighty feet will drain a
large area, perhaps as much as two hundred feet in diameter, or even more;
but the exact amount is not, as far as I know, precisely determined.
"Certain trades pour their refuse water into rivers, gas-works;
slaughter-houses; tripe-houses; size, horn, and isinglass manufactories;
wash-houses, starch-works, and calico-printers, and many others. In houses
it is astonishing how many instances occur of the water of butts,
cisterns, and tanks, getting contaminated by leaking of pipes and other
causes, such as the passage of sewer-gas through overflow-pipes, &c.
"As there is now no doubt that typhoid-fever, cholera, and dysentery may
be caused by water rendered impure by the evacuations passed in those
diseases, and as simple diarrhoea seems also to be largely caused by
animal organic [matter in] suspension or solution, it is evident how
necessary it is to be quick-sighted in regard to the possible impurity of
water from incidental causes of this kind. Therefore all tanks and
cisterns should be inspected regularly, and any accidental source of
impurity must be looked out for. Wells should be covered; a good coping
put round to prevent substances being washed down; the distances from
cess-pools and dung-heaps should be carefully noted; no sewer should be
allowed to pass near a well. The same precautions should be taken with
springs. In the case of rivers, we must consider if contamination can
result from the discharge of fecal matters, trade refuse, &c."
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.
If, as in many towns, the supply of drinking-water for many families comes
from the town pump or pumps, the same principles must be attended to. A
well in Golden Square, London, was noted for its especially bright and
sparkling water, so much so that people sent from long distances to secure
it. The cholera broke out; and all who drank from the well became its
victims, though the square seemed a healthy location. Analysis showed it
to be not only alive with a species of fungus growing in it, but also
weighted with dead organic matter from a neighboring churchyard. Every
tissue in the living bodies which had absorbed this water was inflamed,
and ready to yield to the first epidemic; and cholera was the natural
outcome of such conditions. Knowledge should guard against any such
chances. See to it that no open cesspool poisons either air or water about
your home. Sunk at a proper distance from the house, and connected with it
by a drain so tightly put together that none of the contents can escape,
the cesspool, which may be an elaborate, brick-lined cistern, or merely an
old hogshead thoroughly tarred within and without, and sunk in the ground,
becomes one of the most important adjuncts of a good garden. If, in
addition to this, a pile of all the decaying vegetable matter--leaves,
weeds, &c.--is made, all dead cats, hens, or puppies finding burial there;
and the whole closely covered with earth to absorb, as fresh earth has the
power to do, all foul gases and vapors; and if at intervals the pile is
wet through with liquid from the cesspool, the richest form of fertilizer
is secured, and one of the great agricultural duties of man
fulfilled,--that of "returning to the soil, as fertilizers, all the salts
produced by the combustion of food in the human body."
Where the water-supply is brought into the house from a common reservoir,
much the same rules hold good. We can not of course control the character
of the general supply, but we can see to it that our own water and waste
pipes are in the most perfect condition; that traps and all the best
methods of preventing the escape of sewer-gas into our houses are
provided; that stationary or "set" basins have the plug always in them;
and that every water-closet is provided with a ventilating pipe
sufficiently high and long to insure the full escape of all gases from the
house. Simple disinfectants used from time to time--chloride of lime and
carbolic acid--will be found useful, and the most absolute cleanliness is
at all times the first essential.
With air and water at their best, the home has a reasonable chance of
escaping many of the sorrows brought by disease or uncertain health; and,
the power to work to the best advantage being secured, we may now pass to
the forms that work must take.