Our homes and how to make them healthy / by R. Brudenell Carter [and others] ; edited by Shirley Forster Murphy.

Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Our homes and how to make them healthy / by R. Brudenell Carter [and others] ; edited by Shirley Forster Murphy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    49/972 (page 31)
    SEVEN POINTS OF A HEALTHY HOME. for carrying away the mixed atmosphere from all parts. Bed-rooms should be snecially well ventilated and warmed equally. On the whole, the chimney-draught forms the best exit from the sittnig or sleeping room, and the Arnott exit valve into the chimney near to the ceUmg is efficient. The air should be admitted either by the Galton stove, or by the window on Dr P H Bird's method, or by the Sheringham valve, which opens from the outside at the upper part of the room, or by the Tobin tube. For drawing-rooms specially, Mi-s. Priestly has lately invented a very simple and elegant method of ventilation. This consists in making a double window half way up the window-space, the half window being composed of two light folding glass doors. Between these doors and the sash of the window flowers are placed, and when the lower sash of the window is raised a little distance, the air passing up through the flowers ventilates over the half window-doors into the room. In constructing new houses provision ought to be made for bringing in the air-supply from the upper part of the house, from the outside roof down through the house into each room. I have modified an old house so as to bring this improvement into perfect action. (6) The last grand desideratum in the house is the supply of pure water. Properly, the water-supply ought to be constant, so that storage of it within the dwelling is umiecessary. When that is impossible, the cistern which receives the Avater should be left as open to the air as it can be, should be made of slate or galvanised iron, should be often emptied, and frequently cleansed. The plan of placing the cistern out of the way, so that it is difficult for a man to get into it to clean, and so that it becomes charged with foul air from any source, is most objectionable and dangerous. With the best cistern the water ought to be well filtered after it is diwn—a process which is, I think, preferable to that of having the filter permanently within the cistern. SUMMARY. I have now endeavoured to give an outline of general domestic sanitation. I have striven to show what deadly foes may be bred within the habitation, how they may spread in it, and how they may bo retained within its walls. I have tried to indicate what are the essentials in a house for keeping it free of the deadly enemies that may spring up in it, and for maintaining its perfect salubrity, i I have shown that the healthy house, be ita construction, and I may add, be its architecture, what it may, must have for its charter of health the follo-\ving seven points. It must 2^'>^&sent no facilities for holding dusts or the 2>oisonous 2^(f''>'ticles of disease; if it retain one it is likely to retain the other. It must 2wsses8 every facility for the removal of its iv^iurities as fast as they are jrroduced. It must he free from dam]J. It rimst be loell filled with daylight, from all 2)oints that can be charged with light f-om the sun, without glare.