Public health : The Lomb prize essays / Award made at the thirteenth annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Washington, D. C., Dec. 10, 1885. With an appendix.

  • American Public Health Association.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public health : The Lomb prize essays / Award made at the thirteenth annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Washington, D. C., Dec. 10, 1885. With an appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    11/214
    I. BUILDING A HOME. LOCATION. The location of the home of the working-man is often determined by considerations over which he has no control. Cost of land and distance from place of labor must influence the selection. If possible, however, the house should not be located in a low, damp place, nor on made earth. In cities, many low tracts, and even the beds of small streams, marshes, and lakes, are filled in with general refuse, such as street sweepings, back-yard rubbish, ashes, and garbage. Such soil, unless thoroughly under-drained, must be unfit for the location of habitations. It is damp, and will for years be filled with the products of decomposi- tion arising from the putrefaction of the garbage deposited there. Houses built in such locations must be damp, musty, and unhealthful. The inmates of a house built in such a place are likely to suffer from malaria, tilious fever, and rheumatism, even if they do not fall victims to the more dreaded diseases, typhoid fever and consumption. The house should also be far from marshes and other low lands, whose surface is covered with water in the spring and early summer, and then exposed later. Such situations are likely to be malarious. Neither should the home be located near manufacturing establishments which usually have much garbage about them, such as breweries, tanneries, glucose facto- ries, rendering houses, and oil refineries. The site should be one which is naturally well drained ; and whether this be the case or not often cannot be decided in cities without consult- ing maps which show the original lay of the land before any grading had been resorted to, though the position and course of neighboring streams and the location of springs may suggest valuable information. The slope of the land should be from the house. Extra precaution must be taken when it becomes necessary to build at the foot of a hill which is covered with houses from which the surface water and under-ground drainage flows towai'd the home. The location of neighbors' out-houses, •with reference to the proposed home, should also be taken into consid- eration. While an intelligent man will not neglect the sanitary condition of his own premises, his neighbor's cesspool or privy vault may drain into his well and poison his drinking-water. Have the house upon a place high enough, and as dry as possible. Avoid, whenever practica- ble, narrow streets, which are devoid of sufficient sunlight and pure air. The width of the street should be twice the height of the houses along