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Updated: July 28, 2025
The earth-closet is an invention which relieves the most disagreeable item in domestic labor, and prevents the disagreeable and unhealthful effluvium which is almost inevitable in all family residences, The general principle of construction is somewhat like that of a water-closet, except that in place of water is used dried earth.
The only essential part not shown is an earthen-ware pan without a bottom, similar to the pan of a water-closet, only not so deep and with a larger opening, which is attached to the under side of the seat, and which in a measure prevents the rising of dust, and conducts the urine to the point at which the most earth falls.
The tenement-house factories are so crowded that no such thing as privacy or modesty, on the part of men or women, is possible; the usual water-closet is a wooden bucket upon every landing, which fills the air with its vile and death-breeding stench. The New York sweaters, like some of their English prototypes, take advantage of the newly arrived foreigners who do not understand the language.
And, good Lord! how contemptible and loathsome this life is with its artichokes, its palms, and its smell of orange blossoms! I love wealth and luxury, but the luxury here, the luxury of the gambling saloon, reminds one of a luxurious water-closet. There is something in the atmosphere that offends one's sense of decency and vulgarizes the scenery, the sound of the sea, the moon.
She is, at the same time, taught to regard this spot as a kind of water-closet which she ought to be extremely ashamed to possess, and the mere mention of which should cause a painful blush." The average unthinking woman accepts the incongruity of this opposition without question, and grows accustomed to adapt herself to each of the incompatibles according to circumstances.
It is invariably found that, if any failure takes place, it arises from the earth not being properly dry. Too much importance can not be attached to this requirement. The earth-commode will no more act properly without dry earth, than will a water-closet without water.
Of these rooms I was at present the only occupant. They were built so as to be shut off from all the rest of the house by a door on the landing, leading into the corridor, from which a door communicated with the doctor's dressing-room, and with each of the three rooms. At the end was a water-closet for general use.
In one of these buildings the water-closet on the landing has had the door taken down and put away, so that it stands open day and night. On some of the walls of these living rooms the cockroaches and bed-bugs swarm in abundance, literally by hundreds, at ten o'clock in the morning.
Still another way of clearing the pests is as follows: The majority of Rats are Black, or what we call Drain Rats; if they are in a building they will in most cases come from a water-closet.
It may come from a corridor into which other wards are ventilated, from a hall, always unaired, always full of the fumes of gas, dinner, of various kinds of mustiness; from an underground kitchen, sink, washhouse, water-closet, or even, as I myself have had sorrowful experience, from open sewers loaded with filth; and with this the patient's room or ward is aired, as it is called poisoned, it should rather be said.
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