Page:Guide to health.djvu/30

 18 while teaching their children also to do the same. I shall feel immensely gratified.

Our latrines are perhaps most responsible for rendering the air impure. Very few people realise the serious harm done by dirty latrines. Even dogs and cats make with their claws something like a pit wherein to deposit their fæces, and then cover it up with some earth. Where there are no lavatories of the modern approved types, we should also do likewise. There should be kept ashes or dry earth in a tin can or an earthen vessel inside the latrine, and whoever goes into the latrine should, on coming out, cover the fæces well with the ash or the earth, as the case many be. If this is done there would be no bad smell, and the flies too will not settle on it and transmit the filth. Anybody whose sense of smell has not been wholly blunted, or who has not grown thoroughly accustomed to foul smells will know how noxious is the smell that emanates from all filthy matter which is allowed to lie open to the weather. Our gorge rises at the very thought of fæces being mixed with our food, but we go on inhaling the air which has been polluted by such foul smell, forgetting the fact that the one is just as bad as the other, except that, while the former is visible, the latter is not. We should see that our latrines are kept thoroughly neat and clean.