{215} I. THE REMOVAL OF HUMAN EXCREMENT.--We are too apt to judge of the power for mischief of any waste matter by its original offensiveness, and the world at large regards the solid and liquid exuviæ of the human body as the most dangerous material with which it has to deal. Doubtless it is so under certain exceptional circumstances. If impregnated with the infective principle of cholera or of typhoid fever, for example, its influence for evil may be widespread and active, but in the absence of such infection these substances offer a less serious problem, and, as their offensiveness causes them to be more carefully avoided, their evil influence is less, and is less widely disseminated, than is that of the comparatively inoffensive wastes of the kitchen-sink. This is a consideration important to be borne in mind. Nothing is more common than the expression of the opinion that the wastes of a population are offensive and dangerous in proportion to the degree to which excrementitious matter is allowed to flow away with its general drainage. The fact is, that the drainage from a house or from a town, if reasonably diluted with water, is very slightly offensive until it has passed through a considerable degree of decomposition. The outflow of a perfectly sewered town, where the whole community uses water-closets, is less offensive than the neglected back-yard drain of an average New England farm-house. The trouble begins with the condition of putridity. Fecal matter and urine are somewhat quicker than the other wastes of the house to enter into putrefaction, but the difference is only one of degree, and the latter rapidly overtakes the former in the foulness of its condition; so that where a house is provided with two cesspools, one for water-closet matter and the other for kitchen waste, it is quite impossible to determine from the character of their contents which is which; therefore examinations of the drainage of a house should by no means be confined to the manner in which its excrementitious matters are disposed of. Setting aside, in this connection, the peculiar liability of these matters to become the seat of specific infections, it is fair to assume that equally complete and cleanly arrangements are needed for all else that flows to waste, as for the discharges of the water-closet. The purpose of these remarks is of course not to belittle the importance of proper care in the disposal of human excreta, but to prevent the giving of an undue importance to this branch of the subject, with too light treatment of the very serious difficulties presented by the others.