II. THE FAMILY HEALTH
As each person has to live in his own little body house, so we all have to live with other people, in houses that have been built of wood or stone or brick. Some of these houses are very old, and were built before people knew as much about health rules as we do today. Some are newer, but were badly built. Still, we have to use them. Very few of us will ever be able to build a new house. Few of us have a very wide choice of the house we must live in. It seems more sensible for us to learn how to make the best of whatever house shelters the family.
A family has the best chance to escape sickness when every member of it has good habits of eating, bathing, sleeping, working and playing. Then the house must be kept clean from cellar to roof. The basement should be light and dry and airy. No decaying vegetables or fruits should be left in it, for these poison the air of the living rooms above. It should be built of stone and cement. Once a year the walls should be cleaned and whitewashed. The living rooms should be cleaned twice a year, and the walls calcimined or painted once. If the walls are papered, the paper should be cleaned. New paper should not be put on over old. Hard wood floors, with small rugs, are the best floor covering. Rugs can be taken out of doors often, and the floors washed. Iron or brass beds are cleaner than wood. Window draperies and all bedding should be washable. Carpet sweepers and soft cloths should be·used. Brooms and feather dusters scatter dust.
You know you need to drink water to wash out the waste pipes of your body. The waste pipes of houses become foul with decaying matter. They must be flushed every week with enough boiling water and washing soda, or even chloride of lime, to cut all dirt out. This must be done in kitchen sinks, laundry tubs, bath room plumbing and ice boxes. Plumbing should be open, so you can see the pipes. Sunlight and soap are great purifiers, so plumbing should never be boxed in. People are often poisoned by sewer gas or foul air from old, dirty, boxed-in plumbing, or even from new, cheap plumbing. You cannot smell sewer gas and that makes it all the more dangerous. Sometimes the plumbing in a house cannot be made safe. It has to be taken out altogether. In renting a house the
