such officer or employees in reference to any of the provisions of this act.

Sec. 217. For the purpose of enforcing this act, the Board or Department of Health or Health Commissioner or Commissioners may appoint such inspectors, engineers or assistants, as may be found then necessary.

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SITE, CONSTRUCTION AND FURNISHING OF SCHOOL-HOUSES.

The State Board of Health of Vermont has issued the following excellent recommendations and regulations for "lighting, heating, ventilating and other sanitary arrangement" of school-houses.

In the choice of a site for a school-house, its construction and furnishings, the following directions are to be observed as far as possible:

Ist. The site should be upon a slight elevation with soil dry and well drained.

2d. If in a village, it should be at a point free from noises and unsavory odors.

3d. If in the rural portion of a town, at a point free from violent winds.

4th. As near the center of school population as possible.

5th.

ment.

Playgrounds should be provided for exercise and amuse

6th. In villages, or where there is a basement, play rooms can be arranged. In rural houses, without basements, a shed should be provided for exercise in inclement weather.

7th. There should be plenty of pure water supplied for drinking

purposes.

8th. Buildings should be so located as to secure the best light. Particular attention should be given to this in villages where the school-house is likely to be surrounded by other buildings.

9th. Care should be taken when the building is of wood to make it warm. This can be done either by using thick building paper under the clapboards, or by filling the space between the outside boarding and the lath with clean, dry sawdust.

10th. The walls of the rooms should be light grey or buff color. 11th. All doors should be hung to swing out, and in large school buildings proper fire escapes should be provided.

12th. As forty pupils are as large a number as one teacher can well instruct, the rooms should be 32 x 28 x 12 feet high, giving from 200 to 300 cubic feet of air space and 20 square feet of surface area for each pupil.

room.

13th. The windows should be numerous, large enough, and so arranged as to give ample light to every part (and corner) of the The window space should be at least one-fourth of the floor space. There should be no more space between the top of the window and the ceiling than is required to finish the building, and the window sill should be four feet from the floor. The light should be arranged so as to fall upon the pupil from the left or left and back, NEVER FROM THE FRONT. There should be curtains of a grey or buff color for all windows-two to each window-hung in the centre of the window so that either the upper or lower half, or both, can be shaded.

14th. If there is no cellar under the building, there should be a space of at least two feet from the floor to the ground, and there should be windows or openings in the underpinning so that there can be a free circulation of air.

15th.

If the corridors are used as coat-rooms they should be well lighted and ventilated.

16th. In rural portions of a town, there should be two out-buildings-one for girls and one for boys. They should be at least twenty feet from the school building and from each other, with a high fence between. Earth closets should be used with road dust, saw-dust or ashes, so arranged that they may be easily cleaned. In villages where water is available, there should be a system of bowls, urinals, drains and sewers, constructed according to modern plumbing rules. Closets should not be placed in basements under school-rooms.

17th. Desks and seats. The height of the seat must correspond with the length of the legs below the knees. The seat may be horizontal or slightly curved. The back should be formed of a lower convex and an upper concave portion. A desk for writing should have an inclination of about 15 degrees. The desk should be fitted to the pupil each year. A perpendicular line from the edge of the desk should project only slightly over the edge of the seat.

18th. Blackboards should be placed opposite windows, never between, and should be of a dark lusterless color. Lessons placed on the board for pupils to copy are injurious to the eyes by reason

of the rapid change of focus required from the distant board to the paper on the desk; hence, these should be avoided.

WARMING AND VENTILATING SCHOOL-HOUSE.

The heating apparatus must be of sufficient capacity to warm all rooms to 70° Fahrenheit in any weather.

Not less than 30 cubic feet per minute of pure air for each pupil should be supplied, and it should be so introduced that there shall not be uncomfortable draughts. The difference in temperature between any two points on the breathing plane shall not exceed three degrees. The ventilating flues shall be of sufficient size to readily introduce and remove the requisite amount of air from the

rooms.

In rural houses of one room where a furnace is impracticable the above conditions can most economically and satisfactorily be met by the use of the "jacketed stove," Figure 1. The ordinary wood-burner box stove may be surrounded by a casing, or jacket of galvanized iron, with proper air space of six to nine inches between jacket and stove. Fresh air should be conveyed from the outside of building through a tin tube to space under stove.

The vent or foul air pipe (also tin) should be set on legs with an opening at bottom, 12 inches from floor, to run straight up through roof as high as chimney. The stove-pipe should enter this at not more than six feet from floor, passing up as far as possible before it leaves the vent pipe for chimney. There should be a door in the jacket at the rear end of the stove which can be opened for pupils to warm their feet.

A room 28 x 30 x 12 would have 10,080 cubic feet of air. Thirty pupils in this room would require at least 900 cubic feet of fresh air per minute. To supply this amount of fresh air would require a tube of 24 to 30 inches in diameter. In order to properly warm this volume of air in the coldest weather it would be best that there should be two of the jacketed stoves, each receiving fresh air through a 12 or 15-inch tube. The foul air vent should be of corresponding size. All of these pipes should be provided with dampers to regulate the inlet and outlet of air.

School directors should not only see to it that their teachers are instructed how to use these dampers properly, but should be sure that their instructions are carefully followed.

FOOD ADULTERATION AND THE PURE FOOD LAW.*

BY DR. LEE K. FREMKEL, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE.

It will probably come as a surprise to many, that the tendency existing among manufacturers and dealers to-day, to produce and sell articles of food which are either below standard, or different from what they are represented to be, is not an insignificant fact, but a condition which has developed remarkably within the past decade. If it be remembered, furthermore, that in a number of instances, the adulteration which is practised is not only fraudulent, but at the same time also a menace to the health of the consumer, it will be seen that the condition which confronts us contains the elements to create a justifiable alarm.

The cause of this remarkable state of affairs is not difficult to trace. It must be sought in the fierce competition which is so prominent to-day in all classes of trade; in the tendency of the masses to buy that which is cheap rather than that which is good; in the inability of the poor to purchase pure food at the price which is demanded for it; and lastly, in the ignorance which renders the consumer unable to discriminate between what is wholesome and what is injurious.

The last is given

The extent to which food adulteration is carried in the United States is a matter of doubt. The estimates of competent authorities on the subject vary between 2 to 15 per cent. There can hardly be any question that the first figure is too low. by Mr. Wedderburn, the special agent of the Department of Agriculture, who has examined the subject very exhaustively. Good judges estimate the value of the food supply of the United States. at a minimum of $4,500,000,000 annually. If we take the very conservative estimate of 2 per cent., the loss to the consumer by adulteration amounts to $90,000,000 per year. Dr. McNeal, of Ohio, estimates the annual loss to the people of the United States at one and one-third billion dollars; and to the State of Ohio, as the result of three years' investigation, a loss $78,000,000 annually, or $232,000 per day. It is immaterial for the purpose of this lecture, which of these figures is correct. Either amount is sufficiently large to

*Abstract of a Lecture delivered before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, February 5, 1897.-From The Journal, April, 1897.

prove that the actual money loss to the consumer arising from the purchase of food-stuffs other than they are represented to be, is so great as to merit attention at the hands of the individual, the State and the National Government.

Nor does it seem that the sophistication of food is confined to any particular district. The fact that nearly every State in the Union has either general or special laws regulating the sale of food, affords in itself sufficient evidence that these laws were enacted in answer to a crying need for them. Furthermore, the reports of the Commissioners, Boards of Health and other officers appointed to administer the laws in the various States, show that the falsification and adulteration are systematic and general throughout the country. What is true of the extent of adulteration, so far as territory is concerned, is equally true of the kinds of food adulterated. It would be difficult to find a single food-stuff requiring preparation to make it palatable, that has not been subjected to the skill of the sophisticator, or which, on investigation, will not, to a greater or less extent, disclose the hall-mark of fraud.

Several years ago the National Department of Agriculture, under the superintendence of its chief chemist, Dr. H. W. Wiley, instituted a series of investigations of the more common food-stuffs, such as molasses, sugar, honey, confectionery, canned goods, etc. Letters were addressed to prominent chemists in the States of Indiana, Nebraska, California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York, with the request that they purchase samples of such articles in their respective States, examine the same and report on their condition of purity. The department at Washington at the same time conducted a similar series of tests on articles of food sold in the vicinity of the capital. The results obtained from the examination of molasses and syrup are in the main a criterion of the results found with the other articles of food examined. As a rule, each chemist analyzed fifty samples, with the following results: Indiana showed 32 samples which contained tin; of the Nebraska samples, 35, or 70 per cent. contained glucose; of the California samples, 11, or 22 per cent. contained glucose; 19, or 38 per cent. of the Kentucky samples were found to contain the same ingredient. Worthy of notice is the fact that Massachusetts, the State in which the food laws have been most rigidly enforced, showed the smallest percentage of adulteration, only 8 of the samples, or 16 per cent. containing glucose; Louisiana, the headquarters of the molasses industry, gave 16 samples adulterated, or 32