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South Canterbury Times, Issue 2663, 3 October 1881, Page 2

One would think that the Americans, with their peculiar facility in discovering and adapting means to ends, and the knowledge of the evil effects of bad drainage, which every civilized people mast now possess, would at least not be behind-hand in matters of household drainage. And yet we learn from American papers that the “ White House,” the official residence of the President (this above all others !) is so badly arranged as regards sanitation that it a veritable pest house ! The drains are so badly ventilated—some of them absolutely not at all—that many parts of the mansion are totally unlit for occupation. And added to the malaria from the drains arc the gases arising from- the decomposition of the lower timbers of the building, which is built in a low, damp spot. Very early during the late President’s confinement to the White House through bis wound, four of his attendants .were stricken down with malarial fever, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the President’s room could be kept free from the pestilent vapors. That such a state of things should be allowed to continue —even to commence—in such a place is astounding. Similar astonishment must be felt on reading that in the middle of August last one-twentieth of the newly-formed English colony of Rugby, in Tennessee, were down with typhoid fever. On a medical examination being made into the cause it was found “that the colony had been using rratcr from a large cistern, which,when emptied; was found to contain filth so noxious that its gases overcome the men who attempted to remove it.” The cistern appears to have been supplied from a well near, the water iu which was contaminated, and this

source ofsuppiy was afc once proscribed by the physician who was sent for .to investigate. And this, colony is supposed to be a model one, intended to, be conducted on the first principles 1 The managers appear to have had such trust in themselves that they did not even keep a doctor, as they sent for one to Gincinnotti when the disease broke out. “By Other’s faults men correct their own.”'