Health at home / by A.H. Guernsey ; and Irenæus P. Davis.

  • Guernsey, Alfred H. (Alfred Hudson), 1824-1902.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health at home / by A.H. Guernsey ; and Irenæus P. Davis. 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.

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    bear some relation to the height of its buildings, for every foot of increase in their average height means a geo- metrically increasing number of the builders hurled into the grave. When to this is added that the city is the natu- ral and final resort of a multitude of persons whose habits are vicious and degraded, and most of whom die early in consequence of these habits, it is readily seen that the city's total death-rate is not a correct basis for an estimate of its healthfulness as a dwelling-place. Moreover, cities at all approximating in size to the two mentioned are large enough to include districts widely dif- ferent in their influence upon health, so that it frequently happens that while one part is very unhealthful another part of the same city is quite the reverse. This is notably true of the city of New York. While a residence in some portions of it is very prejudicial to health, other parts are probably as free from unwholesome influences as any of the health resorts within fifty miles of it, and certainly much freer than many of them. The reasons for this difference are to be found partly in the degree of attention paid to the surroundings in different parts of the city, partly to the presence or absence in certain neighborhoods of deleterious industries, such as extensive butchering, rag- sorting, certain manufactures and the like, and partly to differences in the character and contour of the ground, for, notwithstanding any improvements that can be made, the original character of a soil still has some influence, and, while art can do much for a naturally bad soil or location, it can do more for a naturally good one. All houses built upon newly made ground should be carefully shunned, no matter how desirable in other respects. This ground is made by filling in some sunken lots, fre- quently, if not usually, with the sweepings of the streets and the multifarious contents of ash-barrels, not only in- cluding ashes and cinders, floor-sweepings and various off-