Plaster huts with boiled potatoes

Monday, 05 October 2009 00:00

October 5, 1825. A plaster of boiled potatoes and argrillaceous earth [containing clay] could make the wretched hovels of the poor people dry and healthy, M. Cadet de Vaux claims in the Novascotian.

In a courtyard there was a wall, part of nearest the ground had been repaired ten times, so that the man hesitated to repair it any more, when I proposed to him to mix boiled potatoes with his plaster. Let me confess it; he laughed in my face, and shrugged his shoulders. However, I went to a hog's trough, took out some boiled potatoes, and put about a pound into the mason's trough. The repair was completed, and the wall has remained in good condition for several years, offering the following phenomenon, viz. It retains its solidity, notwithstanding the efflorescence on the surface of salt-peter, which is found crystallized. The result naturally led me to mix boiled potatoes in a composition of the plaster, and still more of argrillaceous earth; which has perfectly succeeded on a shed in a garden, which is exposed to every wind, and the sides of which are composed only of hurdles, covered with a mixture of argrillaceous earth and boiled potatoes.

If these particulars could come to the knowledge of the poor people in the country, their wretched hovels become habitations dry inside, and consequently healthy.