STUFFY ROOMS 3S9 



of trawlers reeking with fish and oil, and for the sake of warmth shut 

 themselves up until the lamp may go out from want of oxygen. The 

 stench of such surrounding may effectually put the sensitive, un- 

 trained brain worker off his appetite, but the robust health of the 

 fisherman proves that this effect is nervous in origin, and not due to 

 a chemical organic poison in the air. 



Ventilation can not get rid of the source of a smell, while it may 

 easily distribute the evil smell through a house. As Pettenkofer says, 

 if there is a dung-heap in a room, it must be removed. It is no good 

 trying to blow away the smell. 



Fliigge and his school bring convincing evidence to show that a 

 stuffy atmosphere is stuffy owing to heat stagnation, and that the smell 

 has nothing to do with the origin of the discomfort felt by those who 

 endure it. The inhabitants of reeking hovels in the country do not 

 suffer from chronic ill-health, unless want of nourishment, open-air 

 exercise, or sleep come into play. Town workers who take no exercise 

 in the fresh air are pale, anemic, listless. Sheltered by houses they 

 are far less exposed to winds, and live day and night in a warm, con- 

 fined atmosphere. 



The widespread belief in the presence of organic poisons in the 

 expired air is mainly based on the statements of Brown Sequard and 

 D'Arsenval, statements wholly unsubstantiated by the most trust- 

 worthy workers in Europe and America. These statements have done 

 very great mischief to the cause of hygiene, for they led ventilating 

 engineers and the public to seek after chemical purity, and neglect the 

 attainment of adequate coolness and movement of the air. It was 

 stated that the condensation water obtained from expired air is poison- 

 ous when injected into animals. The evidence on which this statement 

 is based is not only not worthy of credence but is absurd, e. g., con- 

 densation water has been injected into a mouse in a quantity equivalent 

 to injecting 5 kilograms into a man weighing 60 kilograms. No 

 proper controls were carried out. It is recognized now that any dis- 

 tilled water contaminated by bacterial products may have a toxic effect. 

 Flack and I have for fourteen weeks kept guinea-pigs and rats con- 

 fined together in a box and poorly ventilated, so that they breathed air 

 containing 0.5 to 1.0 per cent, of C0 2 . The guinea-pigs proved wholly 

 free from anaphylactic shock on injecting rat's serum. Therefore they 

 were not sensitized by breathing the exhaled breath of the rats for 

 many weeks, and we are certain that no foreign protein substance is 

 absorbed in this way. It has been proved by others, and by us, that 

 animals so confined do well so long as they are well fed and their cages 

 kept clean, light, cool and dry. It is wholly untrue that they are 

 poisoned by breathing each other's breath. The only danger arises 

 from droplet contagion in cases of infective disease. 



