Hygeia, a City of Health by Benjamin Ward Richardson
page 21 of 33 (63%)
page 21 of 33 (63%)
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clothes he and his children wear have been mixed before, during, and
after the process of washing, with the clothes that have come from the bed or the body of some sufferer from a contagious malady. Some of the most fatal outbreaks of disease I have met with have been communicated in this manner. In our model community this danger is entirely avoided by the establishment of public laundries, under municipal direction. No person is obliged to send any article of clothing to be washed at the public laundry; but if he does not send there he must have the washing done at home. Private laundries that do not come under the inspection of the sanitary officer are absolutely forbidden. It is incumbent on all who send clothes to the public laundry from an infected house to state the fact. The clothes thus received are passed for special cleansing into the disinfecting rooms. They are specially washed, dried and prepared for future wear. The laundries are placed in convenient positions, a little outside the town; they have extensive drying grounds, and, practically, they are worked so economically, that homewashing days, those invaders of domestic comfort and health, are abolished. Passing along the main streets of the city we see in twenty places, equally distant, a separate building surrounded by its own grounds,--a model hospital for the sick. To make these institutions the best of their kind, no expense is spared. Several elements contribute to their success. They are small, and are readily removable. The old idea of warehousing diseases on the largest possible scale, and of making it the boast of an institution that it contains so many hundred beds, is abandoned here. The old idea of building an institution so that it shall stand for centuries, like a Norman castle, but, unlike the castle, still retain its original character as a shelter for the afflicted, is abandoned here. The still more absurd idea of building |
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