its sides, is an essential feature. By its means many of the lighter floating impurities, due to the perspiration and exudation of the sweat glands of the surface skin, including abrasions from the skin, or other foreign substances, like hair, dirt and dust, and lint from bathing suits, can be at once removed from the surface of the pool water. It is, of course, necessary that the water level should be kept constantly up to the level of the gutter, and that there be a continuous inflow of pure tempered water into the pool. abominations not to be tolerated, because the always present vapors attack these surfaces quickly. The importance of admitting sunlight and fresh air to a swimming hall, at times crowded with bathers, is often undervalued. I quite agree with sanitary experts who favor putting the pool in a one-story structure covered with a glass roof, and arranging the roof so it can be opened up in summer to admit the sunlight and to aid in the ventilation of the place. In most swimming baths the dressing MULLANPHY SWIMMING POOL, ST. LOUIS, MO. A swimming pool should be located in a well-lighted and well-ventilated lofty hall. It loses much of its attraction if it is placed in a dark room with a low ceiling, where sunlight never enters, and where there is little or no opportunity to admit outside fresh air. Matters become worse when the constructive features of the pool are cheap and unsanitary. A pool with cemented bottom or with cement-lined brick walls always suggests the thought of its being dirty, even if it may not actually be so. The walls of the swimming hall should likewise be finished in enameled bricks or in tiles, and the ceiling should also be tiled. Painted rooms are located along the long sides of the pool. If so placed, it is a good plan to provide two gangways, an outer one which gives the patrons access to the dressing rooms, and an inner one around the pool, which should be accessible only to the bathers after undressing. It is not desirable to have non-bathing visitors walk in the inner gangways, as they would necessarily defile them by street dirt and mud, carried in with their shoes. Much better is the plan of having an upper visitors' gallery, accessible by stairs from the waiting room. A good plan is to have all dressing compartments on an upper gallery, from which baths. Only after using these are the bathers permitted to enter the pool. In this way the bathing master is given a full control over all bathers. It is inadvisable to pitch or grade the inner gangway floor toward the scum gutter, for when the floor is flushed by means of a hose, much dirty water necessarily runs past the gutter into the pool, contaminating the water. A better plan is to provide a raised coping or curb around the pool and to arrange separate floor drains on all four sides of the gangway. How Often Should the Water Be Changed? We come now to the important question as to how frequently or completely the water in a pool should be changed, both for sanitary and esthetic reasons. This appears to me to be dependent obviously upon four factors: (1) Upon the size and capacity of the pool With the same average number of bathers per hour a small pool becomes more quickly contaminated than a large one. (2) Upon the maximum daily number of bathers pool, At those times when there is a maximum attendance a whether its water is admitted fresh or refiltered, must be emptied more often than at times of normal attendance. (3) Upon the character of the bathers It seems to me that the water of a pool in a club house requires changing less often than the water of a Young Men's Christian Association pool, and this again less often than that of a pool in a municipal or other public bath. (4) Upon the season of the year In winter time a swimming bath pool does not require emptying as often as in summer; where once a week in winter suffices, it should be twice a week in summer. The ideal, but practically nearly always unattainable standard, would be the emptying, cleaning, scouring and refilling of the pool once in twenty-four hours. The next to the ideal condition would be to admit continuously a sufficient hourly flow of pure water (one-tenth to one-twentieth) so that the water contents are changed at least once in twenty-four hours, and to empty and clean the basin at least once a week. The dirt attaching to the sides of the pool can be removed by means of long-handled brushes, but the process is not a thorough one; vacuum cleaning brushes have also been tried. The heavier suspended matters drop at once to the bottom, and can only be removed by the emptying of the pool. A pool can doubtless be cleaned in the best manner while it is empty. This cleaning has necessarily to be done during the night, or else on Sundays, if the bath is not then open. Prevention of Water Contamination My personal belief is that satisfactory. sanitary conditions of the water in pools can be obtained fully as much by the prevention of water contamination as by treatment of the water after pollution. The introduction of dirt and bacteria into the pool and the fouling of the water should be prevented, as far as possible, by the strictest attention to the cleanliness of the body of bathers. Accordingly, the most important sanitary feature of a swimming bath-to my way of thinking is not the pool itself, but the preliminary cleansing baths. These should always be, but frequently are not, provided, and they should be-but often are notproperly taken. Sufficient attention does not appear to be given in our bath houses to this very important feature. Even in the hot pool baths of Japan there are, according to Prof. Baelz, who has lived in Japan many years, regulations prescribing that bathers must soap, scrub, wash and rinse thoroughly before entering the pool. In order to attain thorough cleanliness, bathers should be afforded privacy during ablution, for they should perform it before putting on the bathing suit (women) or the bathing tights (men). Some of the cleaning compartments should, therefore, be provided with curtains. A thorough ablution should be encouraged by furnishing to the bathers free soap and scrubbing brushes. If I had my way about it, I would provide not the ordinary bath soap, but a small cake of germ-destroying, disinfecting or medical soap. Cleansing baths should consist not only of downward douches, but also of a few up ward douches (or bidets in womens' baths), and likewise of foot baths. I do not recall having seen in any American swimming bath, in the section devoted to cleansing baths, these very necessary foot baths. They may consist of either a single long free-standing trough, with tempered water running continuously in and out; or, better, of a series of individual porcelain fixtures, arranged back-to-back in the center of the cleansing room. Further measures tending to prevent the pollution of the pool are the provision of special, water-flushed cuspidors, the already described scum gutter, and the location of urinals and toilets in immediate vicinity of the cleansing baths. Large, easily-read signs should be conspicuously posted, directing the bathers to use the toilet fixtures before going into the pool. For women bathers, thoroughly sterilized bathing suits should be furnished, either free or for a small fee, and they should preferably be of an undyed material, as the dye contributes to the discoloration of the pool water. Male bathers should be permitted to use very small triangular tights or loin cloths, but the practice should be encouraged to enter the pool without bathing garment. Strict rules for the bathers should be If it should be decided that for reasons of economy the entire contents of a pool cannot be renewed daily, some compromise must be adopted, in order to improve the water in the pool from a physical, chemical, bacteriological and esthetic point of view. Several processes are available by which pool water, polluted by the bathers, can be purified and used over again. One is the well-known refiltration method, in which the water is withdrawn continually from the pool, passed through filters (with or without chemicals), reheated, and readmitted to the pool. Another method, used in some English and German bath houses, is the Rowe system of aeration and filtration, the aeration of the pool water being a chief feature. marked effect in restoring the pool water to purity. Sometimes the two processes of refiltration and hypochlorite treatment are combined. Other processes are the purifying system using ozone, the Permutit system, and more recently the sterilization of the water of swimming pools by means of ultra-violet rays. Some of the advocates of such methods unquestionably go to extremes when they represent that the same water, refiltered or otherwise sterilized, can actually be used over for periods varying from three months to two and a half years. I cannot bring myself to look favorably upon refiltration of pool water, except where a weekly emptying of the pool takes place, and this for several reasons. In the first place, filtration does not remove the salts in solution, the ammonia, the urine or any other polluting matter dissolved in the water. Secondly, it should be borne in mind that the effect of pollution in a pool which is emptied at rare intervals is likely to be a cumulative one, increasing as the frequency of change of water decreases. Furthermore, there is in many persons an almost insuperable objection, largely on esthetic grounds, of bathing in water which has been used over and over again. If we consider the refiltration method as usually practiced, we find that during each hour of the day only a small portion of the contents of the pool is removed and returned to the larger already polluted volume in the pool after being filtered. It seems to me that better results could be obtained if the pool could be emptied at night quickly and all at one time by means of more powerful pumps, and the contaminated water passed through filters of sufficiently large capacity so that the next morning the entire pool would contain refiltered water. This seems to be feasible, but it would involve, of course, a much greater expense. The number of bacteria in a water is a convenient, though not necessarily a convincing, test of its purity. It is the number of bacteria of intestinal origin, the pathogenic germs present, which alone interest us, and they bear no specific proportionate relation to the total number of bacteria. Bacteriological examinations are all very well, but for myself I should like to see, in the investigations of swimming pools, more importance attached by expert hygienists to the physical and chemical examinations of the water. A sound opinion was expressed not long ago by a very prominent German sanitary engineer, the late Baurat Herzberg, that "it is not the number of bacteria in the water which determine, from a practical point of view, the contamination of the pool, but rather the suspended and dissolved substances, the urine, the perspiration, the skin abrasions, the fat particles, the dirt and soap carried in the swimming suits. All the matter passing into solution cannot be filtered out. The claims of the artificial purification of the pool water have been greatly exaggerated and overestimated." That some saving in the amount of the water bill can be effected by adopting refiltration is conceded, but should this be the chief consideration? In estimating such saving, moreover, consideration should, of course, be given to the cost of the filters, of the chemicals, of the amount of water used daily for washing the filters, and the incidental cost of the labor. Conclusion Reviewing what has been said, the sanitation of people's free baths and of public baths generally, and the hygiene of the swimming pool in particular, are, and always must remain, to a large extent, merely the application and enforcement of common sense, not only in the planning and equipment, but essentially so in the supervision and in the rules and regulations for the management of such places. The Need for One and What a Community Thinks About It-Such a Laundry to be Opened in New York on November 14, 1914 By Philip S. Platt, M. A. Superintendent, Bureau of Public Health and Hygiene, New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor T HE wet-wash laundry is a relatively new idea. It aims to take out of the inadequate home the heavy and fatiguing part of the washing. The clothes. are washed at the laundry, wrung out by centrifugal hydro-extractors, and returned to the owner in a condition ready for ironing. As conducted at present, the majority of such laundries cannot be said to be attractive from the sanitary point of view. There is wide room for improvement, as the accompanying photographs indicate. Furthermore, the laundry problem is a community affair. From an economic point of view, the time and space devoted to this weekly act is extravagant. Both would be saved if the work were centralized, instead of being divided among many homes. The city has already recognized its responsibility in the matter of public baths. Obvious as its duty in this regard now appears, it was only 20 years ago that the idea was bitterly opposed as socialistic. But of what avail is a cleansing bath if the clothes which must be donned are filthy, and the opportunities for washing in the home are inadequate and one cannot afford to send one's wash to a commercial laundry? Abroad, this difficulty has been met in two ways. First, municipal laundries have been established where a wash can be done at a price which is within reach of the poorest. Second, municipal wash houses, where, in clean, attractive surroundings, a man or a woman can do his or her own washing and ironing at cost price, have proved to be a boon to the people. Fifteen municipal wash houses have already been established in American cities, five of which, and by far the best, are in Baltimore, Md. In connection with the new West 28th Street Public Bath, now under construction in New York, the Bureau of Public Health and Hygiene urged the city to establish a wet-wash laundry. This could not be accomplished, but an individual-tub wash house is being installed in the basement, where, with the coöperation of this Bureau, its usefulness to the neighborhood will be developed. And yet, at best, the wash house is only a palliative measure. It does not solve the problem for the working woman, nor strike at the root of the extravagance of decentralized washing, and its capacity is always small. The remarkable success of the wetwash laundry during the past few years indicates its value. But of model wet-wash laundries operated by a municipality, or established and conducted by individual initiative as an example of what the wetwash laundry business should be, we have none. The Canvass of the East Side District The careful canvass of some 500 New York homes in the neighborhood of First to Third avenues and 37th to 40th streets to discover what the present methods of washing are, and how the idea of a clean, rapid, inexpensive wet-wash laundry, conducted in such a way as to be an example to the city, would be received, has revealed some interesting and valuable facts. A questionnaire was drawn up with the idea of preserving the information which the experienced investigator was able to elicit in the course of her intimate chats. After each woman had been drawn into expressing her views about the laundry problem in her own case, the proposed Milbank Wet-Wash Laundry was explained in detail and her reaction to the idea was obtained. This information was later recorded. Very often a group of women was talked to at the same time, making it impossible to get a complete record, so the replies of only about one-third of those interviewed were fully preserved. However, as these are representative, and not a |