germs. Then, we also should look well to the ice we use, as much of it is frozen from very impure water.

Again; we see dwellings built down upon the ground; no ventilation under them; everything moldy and damp— even water standing under the house, and no drainage. The cesspools are generally uncemented pits, dug out in the porous beds of which we have been speaking. That these beds do not lose their porosity because turned to such a purpose, and known by such a name, is evident from the fact that these reservoirs of impurity so seldom overflow. Their liquid contents dissappears, where does it go? Obviously, where all surface water goes, to a lower depth; to mingle with the great sheet beneath, from whence our supply of drinking water is drawn; or, if a draining pit, sunk two or three times its own depth, is at hand, to that pit it will hasten by the shortest routes-even though we call this pit a well. It is physically demonstrable that, in multitudes of instances, the cesspools feed the wells: the additions to the cesspools of one day are pumped from the well on the next; the great law of habit applies to underground waterways no less than to human character, where the water goes one day, it is likely to go the next; direct channels of communication will be established to meet the daily demand. In some instances, a marvelous rapidity is found to exist. A case is recorded in which the chloride of lime was thrown into a cesspool, and the adjoining well instantly yielded chlorinated water. Do you ask, What are the vaunted filter beds doing all this time, while the wells are being fed from these vile sources? I answer, They are doing their appropriate work steadily and well; they are clarifying all of the water that flows through them. It requires but a few feet of these natural filters to thoroughly remove the solid particles contained in the water when it enters them. They generally remove both the odor and color, also, from the surface of the water. In some respects, they effectually purify water-give them time enough, and they will transform the foulest and most noisome sewage-water into the crystal springs which poets celebrate in immortal verse, and which even religion takes as the type of its best gifts to man; but time they must have, and they can gain time only by the intervention of sufficient distance between the points of supply and delivery. A city or town well may give no warning of its venom; its waters are refreshingly cool, for they have come from a sufficient depth; they are

clear and sparkling, for they have been strained through a filter adequate to free them not only from solid particles, but from all color, also; they may even give no odor-at least, those accustomed to their use will detect none-and yet they may be ladened with the deadliest pestilence. Where, then, shall we look for a proper water-supply? To our reservoirs supplying our cities; to wells and springs, certainly, where they are properly located, and above all, where they are properly guarded against performing the vicarious duty of discharging sewage. Roof-water gathered in properly constructed cisterns, and drawn for use by properly constructed apparatuses, is always safe. Running water is generally safe, but even this may be a carrier of poisonous germs before it beconies purified by this great cleansing and disinfectant process of running and encountering light and air-the wonderful transformatives; the mightiest of terrestrial forces: and yet the mildest.

"Am I my brother's keeper?" is often asked by selfish men in every age. Sanitary Science answers, "Yes; unless you keep your brother, you can not keep yourself; you may leave him to live and die, like a brute-in a worse condition, even-but no man,' not even the loathsome beggar, 'liveth or dieth to himself;' the pestilence which he breeds may come on the wind betwixt him and your nobility, and smite you in your purple and fine linen." The responsibility is at our own doors, the curse does not come causeless. When, a few years since, the cholera was approaching the shores of the English dominion, the clergy besought the head of the government to appoint a day of fasting and prayer, that the people might ask God to be gracious and turn away his threatened wrath; the Premier gave their piety a wholesome rebuke by advising them not to waste their strength in fasting, but to spend it in cleaning. The Premier was right; and the result showed he knew more of the mind and the ways of the Lord, in regard to cholera, than those who claimed to be his messengers. To obey is better than to sacrifice. We have fallen upon evil days. When the pestilence smote the camp of the Greeks "far on the ringing plains of windy Troy," it was the silver bow of Apollo that wrought the evil; and through all of the Christian ages, even down to our days, it is the hand of God that has been charged with all visitations of disease. But Apollo is dead; and God forbids us any longer to misinterpret his providence; and we,

alas! must bear our own burdens, and, for a multitude of our diseases, at least, must accept the humiliating explanations which are furnished by our ignorance, our self-indulgence and our laziness.

Another unsanitary object often found in dwellings is the wood-box, generally placed behind the stove, the collection of chips and dirt and decomposing wood, on being stirred up, emits an odor decidedly unwholesome in its nature. Another is the carpet on the floors. There should be no carpet on the floor of a sleeping room, except a single strip by the side of the bed to prevent a sudden shock to the warm foot by coming in contact with a cold floor. Carpets collect dust and dirt and filth and dampness, and are the invention of laziness to save labor and hide uncleanliness. They breed disease. Again; the wall paper on our walls. The low forms of life that are constantly breeding are often intimately connected with the development of serious diseases; we should remove everything from our residences, both outside and inside, that is likely to form foul gases, especially in the hot summer months, as heat and filth form deadly gases as well as bacteria.

Cold neutralizes or destroys these formations generated by heat; the colder the outside air is, the purer it must be, and, therefore, more healthful and invigorating. Not only is it more healthful in consequence of its freedom from impurities, but also from the concentration of its life-giving property, because air is condensed by cold-it is packed, as it were, more solid-so that even supposing two cubic inches of air equally pure, one at the equator, the other at the poles, the one at the poles has a much larger amount of oxygen, the great life giver and purifier of the blood. How important it is for us, then, to look well to our ventilators so as to give our dwellings good air; as we all realize the fact that the most all-prevailing cause of increased sickness and death in cities and towns, in warm weather, is the breathing of an impure and vitiated air. The most uncultivated know that there are "smells" connected with places in summer which are not noticeable in winter. Many persons aim to have the rats about their premises killed with poison before the warm weather comes on, so as to avoid noisomeness about the premises. Hence, it must be set down as a practical fact, that warm weather generates odors which make the air impure; the breathing of which will always induce disease sooner or later, and more or less fatal, accord

ing to the degree of impurity and the duration of exposure to it.

As double the number of persons die in summer time, in the crowded parts of a city, compared with the death rate in less densely populated districts; and as the poorer classes are the most crowded in their habitations; and as poverty, filth, laziness, and uncleanness go together, always and everywhere, it is proof positive that hot weather, acting upon unclean habitations and surroundings, vitiates the atmosphere; and these conditions constitute the real overshadowing cause of the premature deaths, sickness and pestilence which pervades cities in summer time. Hence, the practical inference is, that, to prevent much of these calamities, all that is necessary is to secure a greater degree of cleanliness in person, in the houses, cellars, kitchens, backyards, streets and gutters.

The supply of air is practically without limit-an immense ocean of it, many miles in depth, surrounds the entire earth. Perhaps it is largely by reason of its very abundance that man so commonly overlooks or disregards its great value. However this may be in the higher civilization which he creates, and which carries him onward and forward, he neglects frequently to seek, in the first place, localities in which the air is naturally most pure and most favorable to health and life; and by surrounding himself with elegant, but almost impervious walls, he shuts out the pure air, and breathes over and over again the small measure he has closely imprisoned; or, he makes foul that near his dwelling, by excremental waste matters, chiefly from his own body; or by the products or refuse of the occupations by which he lives—or, too often, but partly dies.

The impurities which find their way into the air are very numerous, and may be in the form of either gases, vapors or solid particles. But a wonderful series of processes goes on continually in the outer atmosphere which preserves the air in most localities in a state of comparative purity. It is for the most part in enclosed spaces, rooms, schools, shops, factories and close yards, where these purifying processes are not and can not be in full operation, that the air becomes so impure as to frequently be quite unfitted for the purposes of respiration; as it likewise does, too, near collections of decomposing waste organic matters, which rapidly foul the air.

Many of the impurities in air can not be detected by the sense of smell, nor of taste; and hence they may be inhaled

without knowledge of it on the part of those who breathe them. Other impure substances may be smelt or tasted at first, but after a little time if they remain in the air the nerves of smell and taste lose their delicacy, and do not recognize the impurities. Air may be rendered practically impure, or unfit for the purposes of respiration, by a change in the proportion of its natural constituents; as by excess of carbonic acid; or, a deficiency of oxygen. Again; the impurities in air may be divided into suspended matters-which float about in the air and are wafted hither and thither by winds or currents of air-and gaseous matters, which quickly mingle with the air of the suspended matters. Some of the particles reflect and scatter rays of light, and thus frequently become visible, and are familiar to every one; as when seen like fine moats in the course of a ray of light passing through a dark room. These fine, countless particles, which are so light as not to subside in air, and which we thus see frequently in a ray of light, are almost universally diffused, everywhere.

As has been shown, by Tichborne and Tyndall, by the exhalations from the sick the air is vitiated more rapidly, and rendered more noxious, than by those from persons in health. This is especially true as regards all diseases, but more especially the specific, eruptive fevers which implicate the skin and mucous linings of the air passages, as in smallpox, scarlet fever, measles and the like; and also as regards diphtheria, erysipeles and some diseases of the lungs, the specific contagiums of other contagious diseases are doubtless given off by the skin and lungs, and pass into the air, which then acts as a medium by which others receive the disease. In diseases with certain puruleut discharges, putrefying particles and pus-cells are thrown off into the air, and may give rise to most serious specific disease in those inhaling them. Again; the effects of breathing breathed air. The effects of breathing air which has become decidedly offensive to the sense of smell from containing the foetid organic matter, carbonic acid, and excess of watery vapor exhaled from the lungs and skin, are very marked in most persons; the symptoms are frequently languor, heaviness, headache, and sometimes nausea and febrile symptoms, which may continue for a day or two, when, the air becoming still more impure from these causes, it soon destroys life; or, if the persons survive, they suffer from a sort of "putrid fever," with boils and other evidences of affected nutrition.