io2 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pie as regards troops ; but the worst of all was to be found in the 

 Indian jails, where, in some instances, 70 cubic feet only of air was 

 the average allowed; in no cases did it exceed 300 cubic feet. 

 The mortality was, as might be expected, one in four. It was a 

 humble imitation of the Black Hole of Calcutta. So at the end 

 of the last century, in the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, the mortality 

 from trismus of the children was one in every six born ; by better 

 conditions of ventilation, it was reduced to one in nineteen and a 

 half (Carpenter, page 985) ; and this number of deaths was again 

 reduced. So in the London workhouses of the last century, twenty- 

 three out of twenty-four children died in their first year. By re- 

 forms, especially by improved ventilation, the number of deaths 

 was reduced from between 2,000 and 3,000 to between 400 and 500 

 (Carpenter, page 365). So with our soldiers. When barracks 

 improved, especially in the matter of ventilation, deaths from 

 zymotic diseases fell from 4*1 per 1,000 to 0"96 per 1,000 (Galton). 

 So in the case of our sailors on board the Kattlesnake, a case 

 which came under the notice of Prof. Huxley. The crew (Car- 

 penter, page 25G) had acquired by confinement (this seems to have 

 been the special cause, though not the only cause) a predisposition 

 to disease. No malady appeared, however, until one of them 

 slightly wounded his hand: then typhoid resulted, and ran 

 through the whole ship's company. They had carefully prepared 

 themselves for disease with the poisons of impure air. 



"We suspect that no class of human beings suffers so much 

 from the poison of foul air as infants. Older children and grown- 

 up persons are seldom so much shut up, and the diseases by which 

 so many infants die, infantile diarrhoea, convulsions, and infantile 

 pneumonia,* strongly suggest the irritation likely to be pro- 

 duced by breathing these waste-poisons; though improper food 

 must also bear a large share of the blame. Of all the evil conse- 

 quences, however, of foul air none can be traced more surely than 

 phthisis or pulmonary consumption. Wherever men are crowded 

 together without care and proper means to supply them with 

 fresh air, there pulmonary disease shows itself. Parkes, Dr. A. 

 Ransome, Sir D. Galton, and others have collected many interest- 

 ing examples bearing on this matter. \ Sir D. Galton tells us 

 (page 502) that after our barracks were improved ventilation 

 being one of the leading improvements chest and tubercular dis- 

 ease, which had been fatal to 101 per 1,000 soldiers, was only 



* These make up a very large proportion. See lectures by Sutton. Health Lectures, 

 1879-'80, p. 130. 



f " Experiments have recently been made in Berlin, in a room closely shut up after the 

 death of a consumptive patient. Six weeks after the death living microbes of phthisis 

 were found on the mirror, walls, and picture-frames, and these introduced into the body of 

 a guinea-pig produced the disease." (L. P.) 



