Write Right~Clean Your Basement--Avoid Effluvia!

Do you think you have problems in your basement? Is it messy? Too many boxes? Tools? Spiders or centipedes? Leaks? The bogeyman? 

Well, how about effluvia?  Effluvium (a term no longer in technical use) was the exhalation or emanation of bad odors that were of an injurious and noxious nature. Effluvia is related to miasmas, the topic I discussed last week. Both were bad air thought to cause disease when inhaled.

Here’s an excerpt from The Young Housewife’s Counsellor and Friend (1871):

Examine your cellars frequently at all seasons, especially in the spring, when vegetables are sprouting and decaying. The effluvia from decomposing vegetable matter will engender disease. Have everything of the kind removed, with all mouldy articles, boxes, barrels, tubs, especially such as have contained vegetables, pickles, either of meats or vegetables, fish or spirits, vinegar, wines, or decaying matter of any kind. Leave the doors and window open frequently for airing; whitewash at least once a year, and fumigate, if any disagreeable odors be present, with chloride of lime. Attention to such matters may save the lives of your family. Surely worth the pains. Typhoid fevers, cholera, etc. are engendered in this way.

Based on this, I think I’d rather take on the bogeyman than a basement full of effluvia.

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Write Right~Would You Like Some Miasma with Your Coffee?

My Keurig®

Last year I got myself a Keurig® coffee maker for my birthday. Hands down, one of my best purchases ever! I bought one of the larger ones with a good sized water tank that holds enough water for at least five cups of coffee.  

In preparation for that first (awesome, amazing, wonderful) morning cup of coffee, I fill Keurig®’s tank the evening before so that all I have to do is put one of the little K-Cups in the Keurig® when I wake up and push the button. Then, about a minute later, I have a cup of coffee. 

Yes, the days of grinding my own beans and using the drip coffee maker are over. I will admit that freshly ground is better, but there’s not a big enough difference to make me give up the convenience of my Keurig®

So what does this have to do with The Borrowed Book? No, I’m not trying to convince everyone to buy a Keurig®. I was reading The Young Housewife’s Counsellor and Friend from 1871 looking for something of interest to share with our bloggers, and I found this little tidbit that made me think:

Water that has been standing in the house is not fit to be used for coffee or tea. Unwholesome gases are apt to be imbibed from the air in which persons have been breathing for even an hour. Standing water is unwholesome to drink; it should be often replaced with fresh.

To make sense of this excerpt, I have to explain that what people called miasmas (noxious exhalations from putrescent organic matter; poisonous effluvia or germs polluting the atmosphere) were thought to be the cause of disease in the 1800s. I don't have space to address miasmas further in this article. I hope to do so in the future.

But in the meantime, I'm making a sign for the kitchen:  

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