WOMEN'S DUTIES TO AVOID FEVER.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 149, 27 June 1898, Page 6

WOMEN'S DUTIES TO AVOID FEVER.

In the first place absolute cleanliness should reign in every part of her domain. • The garden and grounds about the honse no matter how large or how small they may be, should receive us careful cleaninir as the house itself. Every particle of dead or dying vegetable matter, in the shape even of falling leaves should be carefully raked up and burned. Fresh painting of old wooden fences, even those hedging in a tiny city lot, is especially necessary, as bacteriologists tell us that there aio no more dangerous lurking-places for certain germs. In the country tlie hen-house and the domain of the pigs should be repeatedly whitewashed, and the wells and cisterns thoroughly cleaned ready for the winter rains. The rubbish-heaps Avhich deface .so many beautiful farms, should be demolished, and the component parts, which cannot bo burned, buried in that •(rent purifier, Mother Earth. While the tears of many housewives lead them, in time of general panic, to take their children into the country, out of the reach, as tliey believe, of danger, it often happens that they are going into the very tcetli of the epidemic. The sanitary conditions of a great city are generally more carefully attended to than are those of small villages. The women living upon farms, and in small towns, are the ones who, by example, should investigate suid reform existing conditions. Then if disease should come at any time to our crowded cities, there will be safe place* of refuge instead of harbours of contagion. The womu.ll who would be shocked to see heaps of garbage in a city streot sends the household refuse to be thrown behind the barn. Then the hot sun generates in it all manner of dangerous germs, and yet, whe» some member of the household becomes a prey todisea.se, she cannot understand the cause. It is quite as necessary that iko farmer's wife should burn or bury the garbage of the farm as it is that the city houHcwifo should attend to its removal from her home. The pails in use about the farmhouse should be of tin or zinc, instead of wood, or, what is w»rse still, those made of absorbent composition. ('overs should be provided for every one. A daily scalding in hot water and soap, and a sun-bath of hours, are other essentials to safety. Chloride of lime and copperas should be used with a lavish hand about outhouses of a.ll kinds. Too often the sweet air of the country is defiled by odours which would disgrace even a crowded tenement. A trifle will buy enough copperas to lost an entire summer, and it may be easily prepared whenever needed, by dissolving one 1 int in a gallon of water. The cellar o farmhouse and city home alike can be always kept clean and sweet if the walls are frequently washed with lime and this mixture in equal proportions. Pans of it placed about make excellent disinfectants. These same hints may bo followed with profit by the city housewife, who nliould banish all wooden ash and garbage barrels, which too often are left standing uncovered in the hot sun until the air is poisoned with decaying vegetable matter. A clever woman once said that she judged the character of the housewife by the condition of the barrels in front of her door. They may, indeed, indicate intelligence and consideration. A little of the copperas and lime should he sprinkled over refuse, and the receptacles themselves washed out witli it. Wasli a garbage-barrel ! Have you ever bent your face very near to one which has not been cleaned in months? If you have, the necessity for cleaning appeals, I am sure, to your reason. JJy using the garden hose they can easily be cleaned, and an old sprinkling-pot can hold and apply the copperas and lime.