not enough, however, if these
tenements are almost immediately reoccupied. Their condition should be
reported to the Board of Health, and, if condemned, we should see that
no one else is permitted to move into them.

I have often noticed that charity agents, {97} who work habitually in
poor neighborhoods, get so accustomed to bad sanitary conditions that
they hardly notice them. Volunteer workers are not so likely to fall
into this error, though it is possible for volunteers to be very
unobservant. They often feel that things are all wrong, without being
able to state the specific difficulties. An observant visitor will
learn the condition of the cellar, walls, yard, plumbing, and
outhouses; will learn to take the cubic contents of a room in order to
find out the air space for each sleeper; will learn the family method
of garbage disposal; will see how the rooms are ventilated; and will
learn all these things without asking many questions. Dampness is a
very common cause of sickness; when the children cough it is a very
simple matter to ask about the cellar, and even get permission to see
it.

The prejudice against fresh air, especially night air, is a difficult
one to overcome. One mother, who kept her children scrupulously clean,
could never understand the value of fresh air until a visitor explained
to her how air was polluted by the soiled air that we {98} breathed
out, just as water was polluted when we washed our hands in it. When
the children breathed this soiled air in again it made them "dirty
inside"; and this homely statement left such an unpleasant picture in
the mother's mind that her rooms were always well ventilated afterward.

It is difficult to ventilate a small room without making a draft, but,
next to the chimney, the upper sash is the simplest ventilator, and
should not be immovable, as it is in many small houses. A board about
five inches wide under the lower sash will make a current of air
between the upper and lower sashes, and, better still, two pieces of
elbow pipe with dampers, fixed in the board, will throw a good current
of air upward into the room. Another ventilator can be made by tacking
a strip of loosely woven material to the upper sash and to the top of
the window-frame. When the upper sash is dropped, the stuff is drawn
taut over the opening, and, while permitting air to pass through,
breaks the current.

Equal in importance with fresh air inside the house is exercise ou