Health: How to get it and keep it.: The hygiene of dress, food, exercise, rest, bathing, breathing, and ventilation.Woods, Walter V.
Science
Health: How to get it and keep it.: The hygiene of dress, food, exercise, rest, bathing, breathing, and ventilation.
Woods, Walter V.
Health; Hygiene
=Dry Earth Closet.=--This system of disposing of the waste matter of
the household is not so well known in the United States as it is in
England, where it has been in successful use for many years. The best
apparatus is that invented by Rev. Henry Moule, an English clergyman.
The following claims are made for it, and they are supported by the
best authorities:
1. It furnishes a comfortable closet on any floor of the house, and it
may be supplied with earth and cleaned of its deposits by the servants
without the intervention or knowledge of any member of the household.
2. It furnishes a portable commode in any dressing-room, bedroom, or
closet, the care of which is no more disagreeable than that of an
ordinary fireplace.
3. It affords appliances for the use of immovable invalids which
entirely remove the distressing accompaniments of their care.
4. It provides for the complete and effectual removal of all liquid
waste of sleeping-rooms and kitchen.
5. It completely suppresses the odors which, despite the comfort and
elegance of modern living, still hang about cesspools and privy-vaults,
and attend the removal of their contents.
The expense is trifling as compared with that of water sewerage. The
care and attention needed is somewhat greater, and this probably
accounts for the limited use of the system in this country. In country
houses, and in small towns and villages where the facilities of a
system of public sewerage are not to be had, it would seem that the
advantages of the earth-closet system would commend it to general favor.
The earth-closet is a mechanical contrivance attached to the ordinary
seat, for measuring out and discharging into the vault or pan below a
sufficient quantity of sifted dry earth to entirely cover the solid
ordure and to absorb the urine. The earth is discharged by an ordinary
chain or wire-pull, similar to that used in the water-closet. The
vault or pan beneath the seat is so arranged that the accumulation may
be readily removed. In a small family once in two or three weeks is
often enough to empty the pan or drawer unless it is small. The entire
apparatus need not cover more than two feet square by three feet high.
It is estimated that our present wasteful method of disposing of the
night-soil occasions an annual money loss to the country of over
$100,000,000. When the economic value of human excreta becomes as well
known in the United States as it is in China and Japan we will cease to
cast it into the sea.
=A Truthful Picture.=--Any one who has lived among or mingled much
with people in the country and in hamlets and villages will recognize
the truthfulness of the following picture as presented by George E.
Waring, Jr., in “How to Drain a House.” He says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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