The Cecil Whig

THE TERM.

OGDEN FARM PAPERS.
BY GEORGE E. WARING, JR.
From the American Agriculturist.

I have long thought that a part of one paper of this series might be advantageously directed to some of the details of the sanitary arrangement of farm houses as to any other Winter topic, and surely no other is of nearly so great importance. Health, so far as it is affected by proper arrangements for disposing of refuse or organic matter, is more dependent upon the direct intervention of individual householders in the country than in towns. On a farm, the circumstances and conditions under which the family live are entirely, or almost entirely under the control of the farmer himself, while in towns every one is more or less affected by the circumstances attending his neighbor's mode of life; therefore, while calamities befalling those in towns may be to a certain extent beyond their individual control, much of the death and disease from which the farmer's family suffers, results from causes for which he alone is responsible, and which he might have removed. Nothing is more common than for every death and every case of sickness to be ascribed to the workings of an inscrutable Providence. By far the greater proportion of the affliction to which mankind is subject, comes not by the act of God, but by the act of man himself. The range of what is called preventable diseases is now known to be very wide, and all such diseases it should be the first duty of man to prevent. Much of this that to which I especially wish to ask attention--is not only preventable disease, but is disease that is called into existence only by the act or by the neglect of man, and it is not too much to say (after the thorough investigations of the subject that have been made by sanitary authorities), that there has never been a case of typhoid fever that was not almost directly caused by the ignorance, or by the criminal neglect of some person whose duty it should have been to prevent it. Such disease never comes without cause, and its cause is never anything else than organic poisoning arising from decaying organic matter or from the spread of the infection directly from a patient suffering from the disease.

Typhoid fever has many names, all of which are suggestive of its origin. It is called 'drain-fever,' 'sewer-fever,' 'cesspool-fever,' 'night soil-fever,' 'foul well-fever,' etc., and it is never caused except by the introduction into the system of the germs of the disease--which can originate only through the operation of neglected organic wastes, or by communication through the lungs or stomach by means of foul air or foul water, or of germs arising from the persons or from the excreta of typhoid patients. So far as its contagion is concerned, ample ventilation of the sick-room, and the immediate removal or disinfection of the faeces are ample preventives. It is not contagious as small pox is, but its spread is caused by the action of germs which infect the locality of the patient, and extend more or less widely according to the precautions used to confine it. There is not necessarily the least danger that the disease will attack even the constant attendant of the patient, if proper care is taken. This part of the subject may, perhaps, be left to the control of the physician who has charge of the case; but with the farmer himself must rest the entire responsibility of the origin of every first case breaking out in his household. This is a certain and thoroughly well-established fact, and there attaches to him the full measure of guilt for every such case. This is a responsibility for which the community should hold him strictly accountable. It would really be as correct to ascribe a red-handed murder to Providence as to attempt in this way to console ourselves for a fatal attack of typhoid fever. We are taught that we shall not cleave our child's skull with an ax, and that if we do, death will surely result, but we are no less absolutely taught that we shall not poison our child's blood with the foul emanations of our house drains, and with the contamination of our drinking water wells, lest the same fatal result follow. We may ignorantly load the water with which our families are supplied with lead poison, and so be without the guilt of intention; or we may ignorantly poison our wells by the infiltration of infected organic matter, and in this case, as in the other, be acquitted of the charge of criminal intent. But in these days, when so much has been published concerning the origin of diseases of this class, however free we may be of all criminal intent, the serious charge of criminal neglect must surely lie at our door.

Now, all this may seem very savage talk to put into a paper intended for the perusal of the intelligent farmers of an enlightened country, but any one who will give attention to the subject, will confess that it is precisely the sort of talk which is most needed, and which, if well heeded, will produce the most beneficial results in every quarter of the country. There are other diseases, resulting some in death and some only in illness and its consequent loss of service, which come more or less under the same head, but typhoid fever is so universally prevalent in country houses, is so fatal in its effect, and is so readily prevented, that it constitutes the most conspicuous type of its class, and is most entitled to consideration. It may be assumed, without hesitation, that whenever a pronounced case of typhoid breaks out in an isolated country house or when any form of low fever occurs, though it may fail to assume a distinct typhoid character, there is in that house, or about it, or in connection with its supply of drinking water, some accumulation of neglected filth, some pile of rotten vegetables in the cellar, some overflow from a barnyard, some spot of earth saturated with the slops of the kitchen, or some other form of impurity to which the origin of the disease may be distinctly traced. The spread of typhoid is very generally occasioned by germs contained in the bowel discharge of fever patients, but the disease is constantly originating itself where no such cause exists, and every first attack is a plain indication that either at home, or in some house at which the patient has visited, one or two things has occurred: (1) there has been an exhalation of poisonous organic gases from a privy vault, from a kitchen yard, from a neglected cellar, or from some other source of bad air, which has entered the lungs and planted there the germs of the disease; or (2), either in the food or in the drink of the patient, these germs, originating in the same organic putrescence, have found their way to the stomach. In either case the blood is attacked; the subject may have been sufficiently robust and vigorous, or sufficiently unsusceptible to infection to have avoided a serious or fatal illness, but in every instance the danger has been incurred, and, when incurred, the risk must be the same as in taking any other form of slow poison. This is not theory, but simply a well-established fact demonstrated by long, careful, and frequently repeated investigation. The precise character of typhoid infection, and the exact manner of operation when introduced into the blood, are not known, but that it always originates in the way described, and that it may invariably be prevented by the use of proper sanitary precautions, is absolutely known.

This being the case, it lies perfectly within the province of every farmer (and if the farmer will not attend to such matters of his own accord, his wife has a way of urging him into it), to remove while it is yet time, any source of infection to which his house may be liable. Vegetables, in any considerable amount, should not be kept in the house cellar, and at least once a week the floor of the cellar should be swept, and every shred of waste vegetables removed. Even when this is done, the cellar should be ventilated by a window or other small opening toward the quarter least exposed to cold winds. (and in summer on every side); the privy, if a privy is used, should be well away from the house, and especially far from the well, unless its contents are received in a tight box, and entirely absorbed by dry earth or ashes, and even then frequently removed; the chamber slops of the house should never, under any circumstances, be thrown into the privy vault, nor into a porous cesspool, from which they can leach into the ground, and through the ground for a long distance into the well, and into and around the foundation of the house: the same disposal of the liquid wastes of the kitchen is desirable, but not so absolutely important. It is, however, important that this should be led by an impervious drain to a point well away from the house and from the well; swill, and all manner of nondescript refuse material, such as is sloughed off by every household in the ordinary course of its living, should be removed at least daily from the near vicinity of the dwelling, and the vessels in which it accumulates should be frequently cleansed and aired; manure heaps should not be left to ferment and send off their exhalations at a point whence frequent winds waft them toward and into the dwelling, nor should the barnyard be allowed to drain (either over the surface or through a porous soil,) toward the house or well. If all these precautions are taken, the well will be tolerably safe, and, in most cases, absolutely safe, but if there is any doubt on the point, then let no well-water be drank except after boiling; or the drinking-water of the house may be taken entirely from a filtering cistern, of which the filtering bed is sufficient to hold back all organic matter. If all these points are well attended to, and if the ordinary rules of cleanliness be observed in the household, the members of the family may be considered as safe against attacks of typhoid fever.

I might readily, in this connection, show that in carrying out the various details given above concerning the disposal of household wastes, the farmer would only be consulting his pecuniary interests, by increasing the value of his manures, and the economical use of his kitchen wastes, but I do not propose to weaken the argument by any question of dollars and cents. The fact that by an observance of these simple sanitary rules, one may save those he loves and cherishes, and for whose well-being he is accountable, from the assaults of our most wide-spread and our most nearly fatal disease, and that by neglecting them, he brings upon his own head the responsibility of their illness, their suffering, and their premature death, ought to be a sufficient appeal to any conscientious, civilized man.