disease shows itself, persons using such water are almost sure to
suffer.


[Sidenote: Drainage.]

3. It would be curious to ascertain by inspection, how many houses in
London are really well drained. Many people would say, surely all or
most of them. But many people have no idea in what good drainage
consists. They think that a sewer in the street, and a pipe leading to
it from the house is good drainage. All the while the sewer may be
nothing but a laboratory from which epidemic disease and ill health is
being distilled into the house. No house with any untrapped drain pipe
communicating immediately with a sewer, whether it be from water closet,
sink, or gully-grate, can ever be healthy. An untrapped sink may at any
time spread fever or pyaemia among the inmates of a palace.


[Sidenote: Sinks.]

The ordinary oblong sink is an abomination. That great surface of stone,
which is always left wet, is always exhaling into the air. I have known
whole houses and hospitals smell of the sink. I have met just as strong
a stream of sewer air coming up the back staircase of a grand London
house from the sink, as I have ever met at Scutari; and I have seen the
rooms in that house all ventilated by the open doors, and the passages
all _un_ventilated by the closed windows, in order that as much of the
sewer air as possible might be conducted into and retained in the
bed-rooms. It is wonderful.