Comfort and convenience of arrangement, ample light and ventilation everywhere; protection from damp and miasma, impure and unhealthy smells; warmth, freedom from draught; pure air, pure water, general cleanliness, and attention to all laws of sanitation, are first of all to be considered in every house. The architect or artist can so fashion the external clothing of a good framework as to make it agreeable in its outline and general constructive decoration; but the elevation should be subservient to the plan and constructional requirements necessary to provide all these desiderata, and should not be made the paramount feature in the design of a new house, or in the rebuilding of an old one.
I have lately been reading a powerfully written article by Dr. Richardson, in which he sets forth, in vigorous but not exaggerated language, the various communicable diseases which are "promoted or introduced by the errors of construction in the dwellings of our communities"; and I have been much struck by the number of preventable ills which he associates with bad ventilation, damp, bad drainage, impure water-supplies, want of light and through draught, uncleanliness and foulness, or stuffiness of modern dwellings; and I hope you will permit me briefly to refer to and quote some of his remarks.
To begin with, typhus, typhoid, relapsing and scarlet fevers, are mainly due to foul air, impure smell, or water, or closely packed and unventilated rooms, while the poisons thrown off by these diseases are retained in the walls and flooring, if badly constructed; while impure air arising from dust and dirt accumulations, and bad sanitation, tend to other illnesses in a minor degree, such as dyspepsia, nervousness, and depression, "during the presence of which conditions" (to quote Dr. Richardson) "a person is neither well nor ill." Another of our worst English diseases, "pulmonary consumption, or consumption of the lungs, has been largely promoted by the presence of unchanged and impure air in the dwelling-house," while "neuralgic and miasmatic diseases" are brought about by the same causes, assisted by atmospheric moisture or damp, so often to be found in houses built either upon clay or in moist situations, where the ordinary precautions of covering the whole surface area with concrete or some other damp preventive has not been carried out.
Dampness is more or less directly the cause of all the malarious diseases—ague, neuralgia, and rheumatism—and here the speculative builder comes in, with venom certain and incurable, with soft, spongy bricks which absorb a large amount of water, with mortar composed of road drift or scrapings, foul and unhealthy; with damp and unseasoned timber, ingredients in the plague-spots which warmth of fires bring out in vapor, and wherein moisture seems ever present, dimming the mirrors or condensing on painted walls, or absorbed in paper or distemper, which, on every damp day, becomes a visible barometer, marking plainly the change of temperature.
