Household health; a sequel to The guild of good life

Front matter

22101453878

Med

HOUSEHOLD HEALTH.

Contents

o*

CHAPTER

I. Habits of Health

Chapter I. S

HABITS OF HEALTH.

E old saying-, “ There is no place like home,” is a very happy one when it is applied to health and the benefits which spring from health that is good and beautiful. We who are engaged in forwarding this happy work know we may labour our lives out, and still do little service, until we can get each home, however small it may be, included in the plan of our work. The river of national health must rise from the homes of the people and from every home. Then it will become a great river on which every blessingwill be borne.

HOUSEHOLD ILEALTH.

When I, as a physician, enter a house where there is any illness, my first care is to look at the surroundings. What are the customs of the people there ? Are they wholesome ? Are they unwholesome ? If the answer be, “Wholesome and common-sense,” then I know that the better half of success in treating the sick is secured. If the answer be “Unwholesome, slovenly, disorderly, careless,” then I know that all that may be done for the best will be more than half useless, because there is no habit on which any dependence can be placed, and because habit in the wrong direction is so difficult to move, that the strongest ties of affection itself are no match for it even in times of sickness and danger.

If we could get wives, mothers, and daughters to learn the habit of all that tends to health, we should soon have an easy victory, and doctors would almost cease to be known. Health would be a recognized necessity practised by everybody.

No point in the warfare against disease is so important as that of getting the women of the household to work heart and soul after good health in the household. I am never tired of repeating this fact, and I never shall be until I cease to labour. We always look to women for the cleanliness and tidiness of home. We say a home is miserable if a good wife and mother be not at the head of it to direct the internal arrangements. We speak of slovenly

HABITS OP HEALTH.

women twenty times to one more frequently than we do of slovenly men. A slovenly woman is a woman of mark for discredit ; but there can be no doubt that the excellences of tidy women in respect to order and cleanliness have, without any distinct system or mode of scientific education, saved us often from severe and fatal outbreaks of disease. In all the great visitations of sickness which I have witnessed, I have found the women by far the most useful and practical helpmates. The men sat by the fire if they were at home ; the women bestirred themselves. The women saw that the water intended for drinking purposes was boiled and filtered before it was used ; they attended to details relating to ventilation and general cleansing ; they washed the clothing and bedding of the affected persons ; they attended in the sick-room’s ; they prepared the food. In a sentence, they were acting forces for the suppression of the diseases, and their devotion and their readier and superior appreciation of details were the great saving factors in relation both to the prevention of disease and the cure of it.

That which we want, therefore, is for all women, poor and rich, to learn how to keep home healthy. We want them to acquire and to teach to their children habits of health.

In starting this little work I am very anxious to get these notions about habit well fixed in

IO

HOUSEHOLD HE ALT LI.

the minds of my readers. I am told that those readers will be very plain and homely people, and that no hard words or hard sayings must be written for them. Well and good ; it shall be so. But every one, however plain and homely, knows what habit means, and knows the force of habit. Every one knows that when any simple thing in a room or a house has been used, a book, a cup, a bed, a table, a hearth, one of two things may follow : the book may be shut up neatly and put back on its shelf ; the cup may be washed and put into the cupboard ; the bed may be well aired and neatly made ; the table may be cleaned and set tidy ; and the hearth may be swept up and made neat and cheery. Or, the book may be left open at the place where it was being read ; or the cup may be left unwashed as it stood ; or the bed may be left unmade and all in disorder ; or the table may remain with the things on it ; or the hearth may be left with the cinders loose and the ashes all over the place. Everybody knows also that one person will, by habit, always keep these things in nice order, while another will leave them in disorder, and that one is called tidy, the other slovenly.

I want to add to this, that the habit of the tidy person is healthy, while that of the slovenly person is not healthy and never can be. The tidy person does less work than the slovenly, and enjoys a better life. The slovenly person does more work than the tidy, and enjoys life

HABITS OF HEALTH.

ii less. All turns on habit, and all is said in two lines —

Health is tidiness.

Tidiness is habit.

For it is as true as it is simple, that good health is, after all, a matter of habit to an extent which few persons in the slightest degree acknowledge or comprehend.

Chapter II. Sunlight At Home

H ETHER your home be large or small, give it light. There is no house so likely to be unhealthy as a dark and gloomy house. In a dark and gloomy house you can never see the dirt that pollutes it. Dirt accumulates on dirt, and the mind soon learns to apologize for this condition because the gloom conceals it. “It is no credit to be clean in this hole of a place,” is soon the sort of idea that the housewife gets into her mind; “The place is always dingy, do what you may,” is another similar and common idea ; and so, in a dark house, unwholesome things get stowed away and forgotten, and the air becomes impure, and when the air becomes impure, the digestive organs become imperfect in action,

SUNLIGHT AT HOME.

and soon there is some shade of bad health engendered in those persons who live in that dark house. Flowers will not healthily bloom in a dark house, and flowers are, as a rule, good signs. We put the flowers in our windows that they may see the light. Are not our children worth many flowers ? They are the choicest of flowers. Then, again, light is necessary in order that the animal spirits may be kept refreshed and invigorated. No one is truly happy who, in waking hours, is in a gloomy house or room. The gloom of the prison has always been considered as a part of the punishment of the prison, and it is so. The mind is sad in a home that is not filled with light, and when the mind is sad, the whole bodily powers soon suffer ; the heart beats feebly, the circulation goes slowly, the breathing is imperfect, the blood is impure, and the conditions are laid for many wearisome and unnecessary diseases and sufferings.

Once again, light, sunlight I mean, is of itself useful to health in a direct manner. Sunlight favours growth ; sunlight favours the mind ; sunlight sustains the healthy state of the blood. Children and older persons living in darkened places become blanched or pale ; they have none of the ruddy, healthy bloom of those who live in light. We send a child that has lived in a dark court in London into the sunlight for a few days only, and how marked is the change ! We hardly know the face again.

HOUSEHOLD HEALTH.

Let us keep, then, this word in our minds, light, light, light ; sunlight which feeds us with its influence and leaves no poisonous vapours in its train.

When the gardener wishes to make vegetables white he banks them up from the sunlight. The vegetable called celery is banked up from the light in order that it maybe rendered white or blanched, and we see how well the experiment proceeds whenever we pass a greengrocer’s shop and notice the white sticks of celery lying on the counter. The same thing, precisely, occurs amongst men and women and children. When they are kept from the light in close rooms and alleys they become so pale and miserable-looking that we say of them they want the seaside air, or they ought to be sent into the country. The same thing has been seen, on a large scale, amongst people who live in valleys where the sunlight is cut off to a large extent. These persons become so distinctive or peculiar that they seem to be a distinct variety of the human race. Their eyes are of a pink colour, their faces are pale, their bodies are badly built, and their minds are feeble. These people are called Albinos, from the Latin albus (white), just as Britain was called Albion because of its white cliffs; and it takes a long time, some generations in fact, for them to get back to natural health after they have left the state in which they were born and have mixed with healthier people.

Remember, then, the importance of light for

SUNLIGHT AT HOME.

r5 health, and be sure to get plenty of it. There are many good things the poor cannot get, and at one time none but the well-to-do could get even light in their houses without paying for it. But now that the window-tax is gone, the light has come freely to most houses everywhere when people like to let it in. The worst part is that thousands and thousands of persons won’t let it in even when it is in abundance before them. They let their window-panes grow dirty ; they cover up broken panes with paper or cloth ; they put heavy and dark curtains at the windows ; they close shutters and doors, and do all they can to keep out this wonderful gift of Nature, as though it were hurtful to them instead of beinof what it is,, one of the greatest blessings. In this way they become what is called too sensitive to light ; light, they say, hurts their eyes, dazzles them, keeps them from sleeping, and all such foolish talk which leads them astray in every direction from good health and a clean and healthy home. I have never known health in a dark house, and when I declare, generally, that a dark house is a sick house , I am telling a truth that is as good to remember as it is easy to remember.

In using the word light in what is written above, I mean sunlight. This must be most clearly understood. The lights which we burn in our houses when the sunlight is absent, although very good in their way, are not healthy like sunlight. Gas, oil lamps, paraffin lamps,

HOUSEHOLD LIE ALT II.

and even candles give off bad air, which interferes with breathing, and they should, therefore, be used as little as possible. The best “gas and light company” is the sunlight company, and if we had not got such a company for nothing we should be always crying out for it, and trying to promote it. As it is, we let it blaze away, and invent plans which are not half so good, and cost something all the while they are in use.

Such artificial lights as we must have for temporary purposes ought to be selected with all due regard to health generally, and to the influence of the light on the sight particularly. Coal gas as the source of light is, owing to its convenience, the most popular lighting agent ; but the light it gives is not so pure as that derived from mineral oil, while the danger of escape of gas and of impurity of the air from that cause is more frequent and probable. On the whole, the candle is the safest and best mode of artificial lighting. There is little risk from the burning of candles that the air will become readily impure, and there is, practically, no fear that the eyesight will ever be injured. For good light, one good paraffin candle for each person is sufficient. Some persons get into the habit of burning a small light during the whole of the night in their bedroom, and from this cause the “ night light ” has become quite an institution. In a good-sized bedroom, in which there is no overcrowding, it is not

SUNLIGHT AT HOME.

i7 correct to say that any harm need come from this luxury. At the same time, it should be remembered that the night light is, after all, a luxury, and that its tendency is to keep those who are not perfect sleepers in a state of disturbed repose during the depth of natural darkness.

Before I leave this subject I would say a word about light in relation to the sick-room. A few hundred years ago it became a fashion, for reasons it is very hard to explain, to place sick people in close and darkly curtained bedrooms. The practice is, to some extent, continued to this day. When a person goes to bed from sickness, it is often the custom to pull down the blinds of the windows, to set up dark blinds, or to close the shutters. On body and spirit alike this practice is simply pernicious. It may be well, if light is painful to the eyes of the sick person, to shield the eyes from the light, or even shut the light off them altogether ; but, for the sake of this, to shut it out of the room entirely, to cut off wholesale its precious influence, to make the sick-room a dark place in which all kinds of impurities may be concealed day after day, is an offence against Nature which she ever rebukes in the sternest manner.

This remark presses with special, force in cases where catching or contagious diseases are the affections from which these sufferers from sickness are enduring. For contagious diseases, as they live on uncleanliness, require for their suppression the broadest light of day.

c i8

I once found by experiment that certain poisons, like the poisons which cause these diseases, are rendered harmless by exposure to light.

I had sent me some of the poison from the snake or serpent called the Cobra, a poison which is so fatal that if a person be bitten by the snake he will die in a few hours at longest. The poison proved equally fatal to animals inoculated with it so long as it was kept excluded from the light ; but after it had been exposed to the sunlight for a few hours it lost its poisonous power altogether. If it were not for the sunlight, the dirty farmyards and piggeries and stagnant ponds and ditches in country places would be most poisonous. But the purifying sunlight cleanses them.

Thus, in every point of view, light stands forward as the agent of health. In sickness and in health, in infancy, youth, middle age, old age, in all seasons, for the benefit of the mind and for the welfare of the body, sunlight is a bearer and sustainer of health.

To secure the entrance of sunlight, every house should have as plentiful a supply of windows as it can get, and not an opportunity of any kind should be lost to let in light to every room. It is very easy to exclude light when it is too bright ; it is very hard to let it in when by bad building it is shut out.

In many residences where there is plenty of window space there is much neglect in keeping

SUNLIGHT AT HOME.

the windows clean. Windows should be cleaned once a week at least ; and it would be a very clever plan to bring into general use a simple mechanical contrivance by which the window-sashes can be easily removed and turned into the room, so as to enable the cleaning to take place without the peculiar process of standing outside on the window-sill. Amongst the poor, who cannot afford to have a window-cleaner, the windows often become quite obscured, because the women of the household cannot get at them, as they say, “ on both sides,” and the men are not at home in the day to give them assistance. Baker’s new ventilating window promises to answer best for the object here stated. The sashes of this window hang on centres instead of sliding up and down. When they are closed, the sashes fit neatly, and exclude draughts and wet effectually ; and when they are opened they can be set at any required angle to admit air. The greatest advantage of all is that each window-sash can be turned over, so that it may be cleaned with equal facility on its inside and outside surfaces without exposing the cleaner to the risk of standing outside at anv stage of the cleaning process.

I am quite sure there are great numbers of working men who could, if they would, make their window-sashes work in the way here described. Every carpenter or blacksmith could do it as a matter of course, and so could every ingenious workman who likes to set his hand to the job.

HOUSEHOLD HEALTH.

The introduction of daylight reflectors has been, in late years, a very great and useful advance. The dark basements of town houses can be so often completely lighted by these reflectors, that I wonder they are not universally demanded in places where their action is effective. The light they reflect is sunlight, often bright, and always pure.

Chapter III. The Outside Or Area Of The House

MENTIONED the bottom or basement of the house at the close of the last chapter. It is a great pity that human beings are obliged to have any part of their dwellings underground, and it is a still greater pity that people are ever obliged to live there altogether. But such at present, and for a long time to come, must be, and it is, therefore, wise to make the best of what must be.

Man was made originally to live in sunlight, where all is pleasant to every one of the senses, and there is felt, without doubt, a certain kind of gloom, causing a dispirited frame of mind, in living elsewhere. Those who are accustomed to live and work upstairs find it extremely unpleasant to go down to the dulness in which

HOUSEHOLD HEALTH.

the servants are obliged to work. The art of living there must be gained by training, and then it is said to become endurable — nay, some say comfortable. But the very circumstance that these objections are felt; the very fact that the comparative stranger in the basement feels it cold, dismal, dreary and unnatural, should lead the conscientious owner and superior to enter the same, and see at regular intervals that the best that can be made out of a bad system is made and kept up, and that all the requisites for securing the very best are faithfully supplied.

The first thing, then, to look after in the lower story, is to secure as much sunlight for it as can be admitted into it. Every window, every available point where a window can be ' placed, should be found and utilized. The windows of this part should be kept at all times scrupulously clean, and should be encumbered as little as possible by blinds or by curtains. If, from the position of the windows, direct sunlight cannot be admitted, the difficulty should be met, whenever it is possible, by the use of a daylight reflector. When sunlight is freely admitted into every room in the basement story it is astonishing how easy it becomes to effect a number of great improvements which would otherwise be considered impossible.

The next point to be thought of in connection with this part of the house is the cleanliness of the area in front and rear of it.

THE AREA OF THE HOUSE.

Too much attention cannot be paid to this matter. It is common for the area to be the place where the clust-bin, the coal-cellar, and the larder are situated. We must, therefore, be very determined to have these parts specially well looked after ; for if the dust-bin be neglected, there is a constant source of impurity entering the house ; and if the larder be kept unclean, there is a constant source of impurity affecting the food which is used in the house. I do not think it a good practice for a front area to be made a constant scene of traffic in and out of a house. There are advantages certainly in letting people come down the area steps to the lower door. At the same time, I doubt if the advantages counterbalance the disadvantages. When persons are all day traversing the area, when various articles of food and other household requisites are being brought at different and many times of the day into the area, there is very soon left a dirty condition, which it takes a long time to remove. The area steps get loaded with dirt ; in wet weather the dirt washes down upon the stones beneath, and in an incredibly short space of time the well — which the area floor really is — becomes a floor of dirt and refuse, that is rarely, if ever, completely cleansed. The houses in which the area is not used contrast, consequently, most favourably with those in which the area gate is at all times open, and through which a great number of persons pass daily. The area left free of

HOUSEHOLD HEALTH.

custom and traffic is easily kept very clean ; and if the walls of it be limewashed once or twice a year, it is rendered as healthy as such a place can be.

Floor of A rea.

Whether the area belong to a large or a small house, it should be kept at all times as clean as possible ; and that it can be kept perfectly clean by those who like, any one can be convinced by the simple process of looking into different areas in different parts of a great town like London, Manchester, or Liverpool.

You see, sometimes, in the best parts of these places areas so dirty and disorderly as to be a positive disgrace ; you see, sometimes, in the poorest parts areas which are as neat and tidy and clean as could be wished for.

It is all a matter of habit whether an area be clean or dirty ; the cost is not affected ; indeed, a clean area is more likely to cost less than an unclean one ; because it is a rule, which I believe has no exception, that uncleanliness leads to thoughtlessness, thoughtlessness to waste, and waste to loss of money.

The area should be kept quite free of all litters and offensive things. No refuse ought ever to lie on the floor, and no messes ought to be allowed to remain on the floor. The floor ought to be kept as clean as the floor of the kitchen or hall, and once a day it should be swept up and put in good order.

THE AREA OF THE HOUSE. 25

The walls of the area should be kept thoroughly well limewashed. This is a thing which every person can do or have done. T here is nothing cheaper than limewashing. There is nothing that purifies so completely, and there is nothing, except it be a reflector, which throws back so much light. The walls should be limewashed twice a year at least, and three times is not too often. The effect of the fresh lime is to remove bad smells, and generally to cleanse the air and make it sweet and wholesome.

The Coal-Cellar.

The cleanliness of the area should extend to the coal-cellar. This may seem a fanciful suggestion, but it is really a sound one.

The coal-cellar is a common place for the accumulation of refuse, and unless a vigilant attention is paid to the coal-cellar, it almost certainly becomes at some time or other a supernumerary dust-bin. Even a coal-cellar calls for an occasional cleansing, and a good coating of limewash on the walls and roof is an excellent sanitary provision ; it insures the complete cleansing out of the place, and the removal of accumulated organic refuse, which is sure to be present in the course of two or three years. These same recommendations apply to all other closed places in the area, as well as to any recesses, nooks, arches, or corners which may be present in it.

Flowers in the Basement.

Of late years the art of growing creeping and climbing plants in the front areas of London houses has become somewhat fashionable, and we see even in poor neighbourhoods this plan sometimes carried out. I refer to it because it is on many grounds so very commendable, when it is properly done. It is an excellent recreative industry, filling the minds of those who plant the flowers with pure and healthy thoughts and lessons. It is good artistically, the effect on the eyes of passers-by being itself instructive and pleasant, while the cheeriness of effect on those who live in the basement, and are compelled, where there are no flowers or plants, to contemplate day after day nothing but white walls and dark railings, must be an untold blessing. In place of sameness there is introduced to the eye — in small amount, it is true, yet in amount much better than nothing of the kind — some measure of those changes and variations which Nature in her splendid fertility offers spontaneously to the more fortunate of her children, and out of which variety much relief of mind must needs be found from the killing monotony of viewing one object and one prospect narrowed to the extremest range and ever in sight. Lastly, the plan of cultivating plants, flowering plants — whenever sunlight can be obtained — in the area, is good in a purely sanitary point of view, if

THE AREA OF THE HOUSE.

the proper care be taken to look after what is grown, so as not to defeat the objects that are desired, viz. lessons of recreation, beauty, and health. The proper care consists, first, in not overdoing the attempt to do. Whenever trailing plants are cultivated from the area, so that they climb the walls and extend over the windows, excluding the light, then the thing is overdone. Whenever plants which require much water are too abundantly set about, so that water-vapour charges the air and makes the area walls and adjoining rooms damp, too much is done. Whenever plants which require a great deal of soil, so that large barrels or boxes of soil have to be used for them, are introduced too freely, too much is done. Room is in this way unduly taken up ; and the soil, from its confinement in a box, gets so wet during wet seasons that it becomes a source of damp and dirt, and is apt to cause the plant itself that is set in it to wither away and die.

For these reasons the number of growing

o o

plants placed in the area ought to be limited ; nor does the healthy provision in regard to them end entirely with that attention. It must be made a matter of consideration frequently to tend all the plants ; to see that they are in good condition of growth ; to keep up the supply ; to provide that all round about them is clean, and to remove everything that is dead and useless before it can have a chance of becoming decomposed and offensive.

HOUSEHOLD HEALTH.

The great obstacle that lies in the way of cultivating bowers in the area, so as to carry out the system I am now advocating, in all its wholesome purity, is the instruction of persons who have the charge of the area, and the

o 7

tone of their peculiar tastes and dispositions. There are some occupants who, of their own accord, will plant the area and keep it in good taste and condition. There are others with no taste or desire for anything of the sort, and whom it were vain to instruct. We must not, therefore, trust entirely to home work for the carrying out of this object. But in every locality there are florists who might undertake such duty regularly at a small cost if they were fairly patronized, and who, I am sure, for a small rental a year would keep every area beautifully set with the healthiest and most seasonable plants, at all times and seasons. The boon would be incalculable in London, especially in the crowded parts. The plants would purify the air in the worst places, and in winter, spring, summer, and autumn, would bring with them a changing gladness that would fully compensate for the expense and the trouble incident to the improvement.

That it is perfectly practical to introduce plants into the houses of the poorest is proved by what has been done in this way. The labours of the Rev. Harry Parkes and of the Committee of the London Sanitary Association caused, a few years ago, quite a discovery in