374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



STUFFY EOOMS 1 



By LEONARD HILL, M.B., F.R.S. 



LAST year the distinguished president of this section raised lis 

 to the contemplation of the workings of the soul. I ask you 

 to accompany me in the consideration of nothing higher than a stuffy 

 room. Every one thinks that he suffers in an ill-ventilated room 

 owing to some change in the chemical quality of the air, be it want 

 of oxygen, or excess of carbon dioxide, the addition of some exhaled 

 organic poison, or the destruction of some subtle property by passage 

 of the air over steam-coils, or other heating or conducting apparatus. 

 We hear of "devitalized" or "dead" air, and of "tinned" ox 

 "potted" air of the battleship. The good effects of open-air treat- 

 ment, sea and mountain air, are no less generally ascribed to the 

 chemical purity of the air. In reality the health-giving properties 

 are those of temperature, light, movement and relative moisture of 

 the surrounding atmosphere, and leaving on one side those gross chem- 

 ical impurities which arise in mines and in some manufacturing 

 processes, and the question of bacterial infection, the alterations in 

 chemical composition of the air in buildings where people crowd 

 together and suffer from the effects of ill-ventilation have nothing to 

 do with the causation of these effects. 



Satisfied with the maintenance of a specious standard of chemical 

 purity, the public has acquiesced in the elevation of sky-scrapers and 

 the sinking of cavernous places of business. Many have thus become 

 cave-dwellers, confined for most of their waking and sleeping hours in 

 windless places, artificially lit, monotonously warmed. The sun is cut 

 off by the shadow of tall buildings and by smoke — the sun, the ener- 

 gizer of the world, the giver of all things which bring joy to the heart 

 of man, the fitting object of worship of our forefathers. The ven- 

 tilating and heating engineer hitherto has followed a great illusion in 

 thinking that the main objects to be attained in our dwellings and 

 places of business are chemical purity of the air and a uniform 

 draughtless summer temperature. 



Life is the reaction of the living substance to the ceaseless play of 

 the environment. Biotic energy arises from the transformation of 

 those other forms of energy — heat, light, sound, etc. — which beat upon 

 the transformer — the living substance (B. Moore). Thus, when all 



1 Address of the president to the Physiological Section of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, Dundee, 1912. 



