SANITATION
Girl Scouts should do everything in their power to make and keep their homes healthy as well as happy.
Most of you cannot choose your own dwelling, but whether you live in a house, a cottage, a flat, in rooms, or even in one room of a house, you can do a very great deal to keep it healthy and pure.
Fresh air is your great friend; it will help you to fight disease better than anything else. Open all your windows as often as you can, so that the air may get into every nook and corner. Never keep an unused room shut up. You know what a stagnant pool is like—no fresh water runs through it, it is green and slimy, and full of insects and dead things; you would not care to bathe in it. Well, still and stuffy air in a house is very much worse, only, unluckily, its dangers cannot be seen, but they are there lying in ambush for the ignorant person. Disease germs, poisonous gases, mildew, insects, dust, and dirt have it all their own way in stale, used-up air.
You do not like to wash in water other people have used, but it is far worse to breathe air other people have breathed. Air does not flow in and flow out of the same opening at the same time any more than water does, so you want two openings in a room—an open window to let the good air in, and a fireplace and chimney to let the stale air out, or, where there is no fireplace, a window open both at top and bottom. The night air in large towns is purer than the day air, and both in town and country you should sleep with your window open if you want to be healthy. Draughts are not good, as they carry away the heat from your body too fast; so if your bed is too near the window, put up a shelter between it and the open window, and cover yourself more. At least one window on a staircase or landing should always be kept open, and also the larder and the closet windows.
