_Rain-water._--The first thing which we must consider is that we have to get rid of the water that falls on the roof. The water from the gutter in front of the house may be disposed of in one of several ways. It may be conducted by a pipe outside of the house down the front into the area; or it may be conducted by a gutter through the roof, or, perhaps, through one of the rooms in the upper story into a gutter, over the middle of the house, between two parts of the roof, and down the middle of the house by a pipe into the drain; or it may be conducted direct from the gutter by a pipe, not outside the house, but inside the house, passing down through one or two stories, inside the rooms, perhaps through the best bedroom in front of the house, through the drawing-room, carefully hidden by some casing made to look like an ornament, through the dining-room and kitchen into the drain in the basement. Smells having been perceived in different parts of the rooms, especially in the bedrooms, various sanitary arrangements may be improved, and even made as perfect as they can be, by a kind of amateur tinkering prevalent nowadays in sanitary matters; and yet this defect which is so exceedingly serious, which is known to give rise to serious disease, is entirely overlooked--perhaps for years. The same is the case when the rain-water is carried in a gutter through the roof into a gutter between the two roofs in the middle of the house, and down by a rain-water pipe inside the house. In such cases similar disasters may occur. But there is an additional danger from the fact that these inside gutters are in themselves most pernicious things. Soot and rotten leaves collect in them, and air blows through them into the house; and especially when these gutters are under the floors of bedrooms, this foul air is often the cause of illnesses which occur in these rooms. Even gutters which are not themselves directly connected with the drains, and which are open at both ends, but in which decayed leaves and soot accumulate and give off foul air into the rooms, may be the cause of sore throats. Another plan to dispose of the rain-water is to carry it in a gutter right through the house to the back (the gutter may pass through the roof or the garrets), and the same remark applies to this method of construction as to those just described, except that it does not imply necessarily a defective pipe running down to the drain. Well, then, the rain-water from the roof should be conducted by pipes placed outside the house; and there is no reason why this should not be always the case. If these pipes are not disconnected from the drains below, but are connected with them either directly, or even indirectly (with a bend in the pipe to hold water), in either instance cases of disease will arise in the rooms, the windows of which are near the rain-water pipes.