The Silent Dangers of Seattle’s Early Boarding Houses

Some time ago there was a terrible affair of typhoid fever in a boarding-house of the most unhealthy sort in New England, and the girls were all ruined, some were dead after reaching and sick at home. After an investigation, the cause was found in the use of a well or from the contents of a privy near with which the house was connected, and through which the fluid ran out at night, and poisoned those in the city air as they slept. It is an unpleasant thing to speak of, but those who know the nature of these dreadful local poisons where many people are gathered together, know of the nature of the privy and the house-drain. Every house should have a dry earth vault, not the filthy vault used for all time. Frequently there is in such a direction as to poison the well, and there is no better for disinfecting this than water. Another evil is defective drainage. Indeed, the dirty water from all kinds of refuse, from certain places, perhaps out of certain windows, and the wagons may run at night from the working animals; we may run the fluid or the urine, within ten feet of the well, and often they are the same, which must reach some of the drains. Now the dry-earth is the important matter, and it is the most healthful. We know better than we once did, that fresh dry earth absorbs and neutralizes the poisons, that an abundant supply thrown over any offensive or sulphurous matter will avert all immediate danger. At the same time the earth thus used becomes a valuable fertilizer. This is the incident and the scientific could be thrown into those ancient vaults which are such a nuisance. Now is the time and it ends the expense of so-called disinfectants. The great work may be done in the autumn when soil is moist and not dry, and the temptation to forget it. When things are freezing or frozen, remove all these causes of trouble, so that mixing with fresh earth so as to obtain the neutralizing qualities.