All sinks should be placed next external walls, having windows over the same, and removed from the influence of the fire-grates. All wastes should discharge exteriorly over and not into trapped cess-pits, all of which should be provided with splashing stones fixed round the same. The basement cisternage should be placed in convenient and accessible positions, protected from dirt and guarded from the effects of alternations of temperature. They should be of slate and galvanised iron, and never of lead or zinc. They should be fitted with overflows discharging over the sink, or over trapped cesses as just mentioned. They should be supplied with stout lead encased, block-tin pipe, the services therefrom for all drinking purposes should be of the same description, and should be attached to an ascending filter, so that water may be delivered free from lead or organic impurities. Lead poisoning is more frequent than is generally believed. Cupboards under stairs, under sinks, under dressers, or out-of-the-way places should be avoided, and when fitted up should always be well ventilated. All passages should be well lighted and ventilated. Borrowed lights are better than none at all. Every room should be furnished with a fireplace, and Comyn and Chingo ventilators over doors and windows should be freely disposed. It would conduce to the health of the house, without adding one shilling to its cost, to build next the kitchen flue a separate ventilating flue, and to conduct the products of combustion from gas and other impure or soiled air, &c., into the same, from ventilators placed in the centre of or close to the ceilings, as may be found most convenient. By carefully proportioning the inlet and outlet ventilation, the air will be kept moving without draught, and preserved in a pure and sweet condition
for respiration. The windows and doors will then serve only their legitimate objects of admitting light, and of affording ingress and egress to the various apartments. The staircase should be made the main ventilator of the house, and it is essentially necessary to preserve the air surrounding the same, uncontaminated, pure, and undefiled. It will be better to light and ventilate it from the top; and to prevent the Ethiopians or blacks of London finding their way into the house, an invisible gauze net may be placed under it, which can periodically be easily removed and cleansed, or it may be furnished with a movable inner, ornamental flat light.
Under no circumstances must lavatories or sinks be brought in connection with the drains. Most people desire the bath-room to be in proximity to the bedrooms; whether so placed or not, all connection with main drainage must be studiously avoided. The hot and cold pipes, known as the flow and return pipes, should be of galvanised iron, with junctions carefully made with running joints in red lead; on no account should these be in contact with any other pipes. The wastes from the bath safe (and lavatories if any) should be carried through the front wall of the house, and should turn over and into rain-water head, covered with domical wire grating to prevent birds building their nests therein, and carried down to the basement area, where they must discharge over a trapped cess-pit, as before described, surrounded with a splash-stone or curve to obviate the nuisance of the soap-suds flowing over the pavement. A brush passed up and down these waters now and then will effectually remove any soapy sediment which may cling to their surfaces. The waste from bath, &c., into heads should be furnished with a ground valve flap and collar to prevent draught, and the bath should be fitted with india-rubber seatings between the metal and wood framing. Mansarde or sloping roofs should be avoided; they are injurious to the health of the domestics, whose sleeping chambers they are generally appropriated to; they are unhealthy, hot in summer, and prejudicially cold in winter, laying the basis for future disease for those least able to bear it. Gutters taken through roofs, known as ‘trough,’ should never be permitted; they congregate putrescent filth, which remains in them for years to taint and poison the atmosphere.” Consult also, as supplementing this subject, the articles Drains, Dustbins, Cesspools, Tanks, Traps, Water-closets.
SAN′TALIN. The colouring principle of red sanders wood.
SAN′TONIN. C15H18O3. Syn. Santonic acid; Santoninum, L. The crystalline and characteristic principle of the seed of several varieties of Artemisia.
Prep. (Ph. Baden, 1841.) Take of worm-seed, 4 parts; hydrate of lime, 11⁄2 part; mix, and exhaust them with alcohol of 90%; distil,
off 3-4ths of the spirit, and evaporate the remainder to one half, which, at the boiling temperature, is to be mixed with acetic acid in excess, and afterwards with water; on repose, impure santonin subsides; wash this with a little weak spirit, then dissolve it in rectified spirit, 10 parts, decolour by ebullition for a few minutes with animal charcoal, and filter; the filtrate deposits colourless crystals of santonin as it cools; these are to be dried, and kept in opaque bottles.
Mr W. G. Smith, M.B., states that two singular effects are known to result from the administration of santonin in moderate doses, viz. visual derangements and a peculiar alteration in the colour of the urine. He adds that three hours after taking 5 gr. of pure white santonin, he became conscious, while reading, of a yellowish tint on the paper, and a yellow haze in the air. His own hands, and the complexions of others, appeared of a sallow unhealthy colour; and the evening sky, which was really of a pale lavender colour, seemed to be light green. Vision was not perfectly distinct for some hours, and was accompanied by a certain vagueness of definition. Mr Smith endorses the observations of previous observers who had noticed that the urine of persons under the influence of santonin is tinged of a saffron yellow or greenish colour. The coloured urine resembles that of a person slightly jaundiced, and like this permanently stains linen of a light yellow colour.
The best test for santonin in the urine is an alkali, upon the addition of which the urine immediately assumes a fine cherry-red colour, varying in depth according to the amount of santonin present. Potash was found to be the preferable alkali.
Prop., &c. Prismatic or tubular crystals; inodorous; tasteless, or only slightly bitter; fusible; volatilisable; soluble in 4500 parts of cold and about 250 parts of boiling water; soluble in cold alcohol and ether; freely soluble in hot alcohol. It is much esteemed as a tasteless worm medicine, and is especially adapted to remove lumbricales (large round worms).—Dose, 6 to 18 or 20 gr., repeated night and morning, followed by a brisk purge.