pipes. A clear passage-way is of the utmost importance. Foul drains are
the result of badly joined and irregularly laid pipes, wherein matter
accumulates, which in time ferments and produces sewer-gas. The common
system of laying drains with curved angles is not so good as laying them
in straight lines from point to point, and at every angle inserting
a man-hole or lamp-hole, This plan is now insisted upon by the Local
Government Board for all public buildings erected under their authority.
It might, with advantage, be adopted for all house-drains.

Now, in consequence of the trouble and expense attending the opening up
and examination of a drain, it may often happen that although defects
are suspected or even known to exist, they are not remedied until
illness or death is the result of neglect. But with drains laid in
straight lines, from point to point, with man holes or lamp holes at the
intersections, there is no reason why the whole system may not easily be
examined at any time and stoppages quickly removed. The man holes and
lamp-holes may, with advantage, be used as means for ventilating the
drains and also for flushing them. It is of importance that each house
drain should have a disconnecting trap just before it enters the main
sewer. It is bad enough to be poisoned by neglecting the drainage to
one's own property, but what if the poison be developed elsewhere, and
by neglect permitted to find its way to us. Such will surely happen
unless some effective means be employed for cutting off all air
connection between the house-drains and the main sewer. I am firmly
convinced that simply a smoky chimney, or the discovery of a fault in
drainage weighs far more, in the estimation of a client in forming his
opinion of the ability of an architect, than the successful carrying out
of an artistic design. By no means do I disparage a striving to attain
artistic effectiveness, but to the study of the artistic, in domestic
architecture at least, add a knowledge of sanitary science, and foster a