Part 2 (1/2)
Another tradition is that a house ought not to be located in a valley, but that a hilltop, or at least a sidehill elevation, is preferable, the possible dampness of the valley being alleged again as the reason.
To-day, so far as is known, there is no direct evidence of dampness being primarily responsible for any disease, although, heretofore, such diseases as typhoid fever, yellow fever, bilious fever, malarial fever, cholera, and dysentery have all been attributed to miasms springing from damp soil. To-day we are a.s.sured by experts that none of these diseases are induced by dampness alone. One could spend his days immersed in water up to his chin and never contract any sickness of the types mentioned merely through that act. Later on, we shall show how the presence of swamps in the vicinity of a house is objectionable because of their providing breeding places for insects, but the dampness itself never has and never will cause disease. As a concrete example, it may be noted that the country of Holland, in large part lying below the level of the sea, with drainage ca.n.a.ls and ditches everywhere in evidence, is, in spite of such manifest possibilities of dampness, one of the most healthy countries in the world, as already pointed out in Chapter I.
This fact not only emphasizes the small effect of surface waters and damp soils in promoting disease, but also magnifies the value of cleanliness for which the Dutch people are so famous.
_Damp soils._
Why is it, then, that damp soils and damp cellars are objected to?
Chiefly, because of the inconvenience and discomfort they occasion. A damp cellar means conditions favorable to the development of mildew and rot; prevents vegetables from keeping a normal length of time; accounts for moldy, decaying odors throughout the house, and is generally disagreeable. One is tempted to say that such a condition is also unhealthy, and it is quite possible that a person living over a damp cellar which contains acc.u.mulations of decaying vegetables, and breathing air loaded with organic compounds, may gradually lose his normal vitality, and become thereby more readily susceptible to specific diseases, but the diseases themselves will not come from the dampness alone.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2--Bad conditions about a dwelling.]
The discomfort and inconvenience, however, are quite sufficient reasons to make it eminently desirable to have the house and the cellar dry.
With this in mind, the selection of the house site should be carefully made. Instinctively, and with reason, the immediate neighborhood of low, swampy, marshy ground, of stagnant ponds, or of sluggish streams should be avoided. It should not be necessary to warn prospective builders that low land, subject to inundation, even though this may happen only occasionally, is not a wise choice of a building site. Figure 2 shows an inundation in a small village of New York State in 1889. Floods are expected each spring and counted on as a part of the year's experience.
The resulting exposure and the inevitable effluvia following the receding waters are both objectionable factors in hygienic living.
Similarly, the vicinity of a stream carrying organic matter, such as sewage from a town above, should undoubtedly be avoided on account of possible odors in summer. Not long ago, the writer was told by the owner of a productive farm, situated below a small city in New York State, that in the summer time the windows of his house had all to be kept tightly shut at night, because of the effluvia from a stream a thousand feet distant, which carried the sewage from the city above.
_Location of house._
A deep and narrow valley should be avoided, not so much because of the possible dampness in the valley, but because of the noticeably lessened amount of sunlight which such a location involves. For such a house, the morning sun comes up much later, and the afternoon sun disappears much earlier, and, since sunlight is the best foe to disease, the more sunlight enters a house, the healthier are those who live in it. On the other hand, the top of a hill exposes a house to strong and cold winds, not desirable on any account, and involving a large expense for heating in winter. Sloping ground, therefore, facing the south if possible, or better, some knoll which rises above the general surface of a southern slope, affords an ideal location. If the slope is toward the south, north winds are kept off, and every ray of the life-giving winter's sun is captured. If the house itself faces due south, the windows on the north have no sunlight. If, on the other hand, the house faces southeast or southwest, then all sides of the house will receive direct sunlight at some time of the day.
_Objections to trees._
The vicinity of trees is not to be regarded as altogether evil, since they provide both shade in summer and a screen against winds in the winter. No disease comes from dampness because of their presence, and the worst thing which may be charged against a thick growth is that it keeps out the sun. Practically two points may, however, be urged against trees growing too close to a house. If near enough for leaves to drop on the roof, rain troughs and leaders become stopped up and cause trouble.
A thick growth directly over a s.h.i.+ngle roof allows organic matter to acc.u.mulate on the s.h.i.+ngles, so that vegetation develops and the roof decays more rapidly than if exposed to sun and wind. Again, and it is no trivial matter, a house whose roof is easily accessible from trees is apt to become infested with squirrels, who get into the attic, run through the walls, and become a great nuisance. For these reasons, then, trees should be far enough away from the house to allow the sun to enter the windows freely and to keep away from the roof objectionable animals, large and small.
_s.p.a.ce between houses._
It is a law or custom as ancient as the Romans that requires a proprietor to build his house so that the eaves should not overhang on the land of his neighbor. Our grandfathers, with the same idea, used to say that a man should be able to drive his team around his house on his own land. In our day it is highly desirable that a house should be built so as to leave as much land under control between the buildings and the lot line as possible. This, of course, does not apply to houses built on a farm of a hundred acres or more, but rather to the house in a small village where a few hundred people live closely together, under rural conditions. In such a village the water-supply usually comes from wells, and the wastes of the household are discharged into privies and cesspools. There is no law, unfortunately, which restricts the location of either of these two essential structures, and it is quite possible for a well, built within a few feet of a property line, to be ruined in quality by a cesspool, built later, on the other side of the line. It seems very unjust that, after the trouble and expense of building a well, a neighbor may render it worthless by the location of his cesspool, and yet, unless one can prove a direct underground connection between well and cesspool, no law is applicable to prevent the construction of the latter.
Besides such a menace to health, there are other objections to the immediate vicinity of neighbors which can be avoided by a judicious interposition of s.p.a.ce. For example, the writer listened through a long evening, recently, to a hearing before a City Commissioner of Health, where one householder and a crowd of witnesses complained of the noise made by a kicking horse in an adjacent stable. The one witness who was not disturbed by the noise, and who lived in the vicinity, was unexpectedly found to be deaf.
It is wisdom also to have a reasonable s.p.a.ce between a house and the highway, chiefly because the dust of the road is thereby kept from the house. There are people who find much enjoyment in watching pa.s.sers-by on the road, and with them front windows would be as close to the road as possible, but it is wiser to have a front yard of at least fifty feet depth when possible.
Finally, the location on a sidehill, even when otherwise advantageous, is to be regarded with suspicion if the subsoil strata are horizontal and neighbors up the slope have cesspools in use. The writer knows of several cesspools, built in rock, which, so far as their owners were concerned, have worked successfully for many years, but the water leeching away through the rock was finally discovered to be the cause of continual dampness in neighboring cellars, on lower ground, to the manifest discomfort of those occupying the houses.
_Composition of soils._
Having thus discussed the location of the house with reference to its surroundings, let us now more carefully examine the character of the soil or earth foundation on which the house shall be built. All soil is made up of varying proportions of mineral and vegetable matter in the interstices of which there are usually to be found more or less air, water, and watery vapor. The mineral substances of soil include almost all of the known minerals, although many of them are found in exceedingly small quant.i.ties. The most common and the most important mineral elements of the soil of New York State are carbon, silicon, aluminum, and calcium, which combine in various ways to make either sand, sandstone, clay, shale, limestone, or other rock. The particular form which these mineral elements a.s.sume is of interest in choosing a location for a house, for two reasons:--
In the first place, it has been a.s.serted that the mineral const.i.tuents of a soil directly affect the health of persons living on that material.
For instance, the earlier writers on hygiene gravely pointed out that very hard granite rocks, when weathered and disintegrated, became permeated by a fungus and caused malaria. We are, however, now so sure of the cause of malaria that we only laugh at a theory upheld by scientists of only twenty years ago.
Some const.i.tutional diseases, including goiter and cancer, have been supposed to flourish in localities where an excess of calcium exists in the soil, and it is true that these diseases do have an unusual prevalence in certain limited districts; but no modern scientist ventures to say whether the boundaries of those districts are determined by the character of the soil const.i.tuents or by some other predisposing factor. The truth is that, in matters not absolutely determined by science, many theories usually have to be evolved and proved worthless before the real cause is found.
In the matter of appendicitis, for instance, it was formerly a.s.serted that the seed of grapes was responsible for the local inflammation, and that one could never have appendicitis if such seeds were not swallowed.
This theory is to-day almost forgotten, and one eminent surgeon has a.s.serted that the prevalence of this disease in a district depends on the calcium in the soil, since it is to that mineral that hard water is due, although this has not been substantiated. No information is to-day available by which the fitness of a soil for securing sanitary conditions of building can be determined.
_Cancer and soil conditions._