There are other ways of having filth inside a house besides having dirt
in heaps. Old papered walls of years' standing, dirty carpets,
uncleansed furniture, are just as ready sources of impurity to the air
as if there were a dung-heap in the basement. People are so unaccustomed
from education and habits to consider how to make a home healthy, that
they either never think of it at all, and take every disease as a matter
of course, to be "resigned to" when it comes "as from the hand of
Providence;" or if they ever entertain the idea of preserving the health
of their household as a duty, they are very apt to commit all kinds of
"negligences and ignorances" in performing it.


[Sidenote: Light.]

5. A dark house is always an unhealthy house, always an ill-aired house,
always a dirty house. Want of light stops growth, and promotes scrofula,
rickets, &c., among the children.

People lose their health in a dark house, and if they get ill they
cannot get well again in it. More will be said about this farther on.


[Sidenote: Three common errors in managing the health of houses.]

Three out of many "negligences, and ignorances" in managing the health
of houses generally, I will here mention as specimens--1. That the
female head in charge of any building does not think it necessary to
visit every hole and corner of it every day. How can she expect those
who are under her to be more careful to maintain her house in a healthy