29. Arrangement for Small Tenements 87 30. Section of Small Tenements 88 31. Building Estate 92 32. } Illustrations of 'Model' By-Laws for Regulation of 33. } Buildings 109 34. } 35. Curves of Unmanured and Manured Barley Plots 139 36. Map to Illustrate Marylebone Small-pox Outbreak 145 THE DWELLING HOUSE CHAPTER I DEFECTS IN PLANNING It is doubtful if there be anything which more affects the health of the individual than the house in which he lives. Modern advances in bacteriology, and the certain knowledge of the way in which many diseases are carried through the air, have given additional importance to methods of house construction. The danger, for persons who are not immune, of being under the same roof with a case of whooping cough, measles, scarlatina, diphtheria, typhus, or smallpox has long been recognised; but it is only recently that our eyes have been opened as to similar dangers in relation to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Pneumonia has now for some years been occasionally spoken of as a 'house disease,' and the same term has recently—but whether on sufficient evidence is doubtful—been applied to cancer. A careful study of the epidemic of influenza, which is showing singular vigour in the seventh year of its reappearance amongst us, has clearly shown that it is communicable through the air. And the way in which whole households go down with it when once it gains a footing in a house, is an additional reason for reconsidering our methods of house-construction. The main object to be kept in view in building a house is the supply of _fresh_ air. Too much care cannot be taken to insure that all the channels of internal communication—hall, passages, staircases—have independent ventilation of their own. Unless there be the means of getting these internal channels blown out by through draughts, the house cannot be wholesome; and in the event of any of the air-borne contagia getting a footing in the house, the liability to spread is enormously increased. Not only must these internal channels have air, but they must have light also. The dark passage, ending in a close _cul-de-sac_ of bedroom doors, is one of the commonest features of the modern house, and is, of course, absolutely to be condemned. When we encounter the smell of the kitchen in the corridors, this may be taken as sure evidence that the house is unwholesome, and that the internal channels of communication are as insufficiently ventilated as is the kitchen. The smell of fried bacon which oozes through the keyhole of your bedroom may be accompanied by all the infective potentialities of all the inmates of the house. This test, as applied to corridors, is analogous to the smoke test or oil of peppermint test as applied to drains, and is quite as important.