“Died at her residence, of a nauseous smell, Margaret Smith, in the 40th year of her age.” If in the mortuary column of this or every other paper, the expression “died of typhoid fever” was stricken out, and in it stead printed “died of a nauseous smell,” the frequency with which we should find these words occurring would not a little surprise and alarm us.
Is it, indeed true, that nauseous smells actually kill? That they are very disagreeable we all know, but that they are deadly not everyone is fully aware. We are accustomed to regard our olfactories as sources from which pleasure may be derived, rather than as monitors to warn us against unwholesome and destructive odors. Did we trust them in the latter capacity and heed their monitions, delicate and almost imperceptible as they frequently are, much sickness and many deaths would every year be prevented.
It is a fact now very well understood in the medical profession that all excrementitious matters of the human body received into the body again through the lungs, or the pores, or the mouth are direct and deadly poisons. They will kill as certainly as arsenic, or prussic acid, or a pellet of cold lead, if enough of them are taken.
Prince Albert died of a minute crevice in the mouldering mansion of an old London sewer that ran under a closet adjoining his summer sitting-room. The odor was imperceptible, but it made Queen Victoria a mourner all her days. One among the distinguished and lamented American dead in 1869 died of a water closet adjoining his office which was not properly drained. The papers said “typhoid fever,” and thousands mourned his “untimely removal from a field of extensive usefulness here, to his everlasting reward.” The clergy and pious people called it “an inscrutable and mysterious Providence;” the doctors said “imperfect sewerage.”
In the country there are fewer deaths from this cause than in the city, for reasons quite obvious: populations are not crowded together, and effete matters are returned more promptly to the soil. Yet in the most healthy localities typhoid fever sometimes occurs, and may always be traced to its only source.
In the summer of 1860 the writer of this article spent some months on the plateau of the Cumberland Mountains, that which, perhaps, the world does not afford a more salubrious region. Within a mile of our cottage an entire family lay prostrate with typhoid fever, and two of their number died. What was the matter there? In one large log cabin, imperfectly lighted and ill ventilated, ten persons, ate, slept, lived. There was carried on all the work of the family; the beds were never aired, the linen seldom ever washed, and the slops were thrown where ease and convenience suggested. To a healthy pair of lungs the atmosphere within and around the house was simply intolerable. But they had become accustomed to the odor, though it utterly refused to make peace with them.
As the warmth of the sun increases, more and more vigilance should be used by the house-keeper to keep everything in and around her premises perfectly sweet and wholesome. Dry earth will completely disinfect and deodorize every offensive substance. Where this cannot be applied, lime, dilute sulphuric acid, and copperas water form very good substitutes. Particular attention should be paid to the drainage of the sink, especially if that and the well are contiguous. Sleeping rooms should be thoroughly aired and sunned every day, and the bedding hung upon a line or fence at least once every week during hot weather. If these simple rules are religiously observed, whatever other diseases may affect the family, typhoid fever will not be among them.–Hearth and Home.
This was first posted on Notional Slurry, but got lost when Bill changed blog engines. It’s fun to see it again.
[tags]Michigan Argus, June, 1870[/tags]