BAD AIR AND BAD HEALTH. 103 



fatal to 4*2, and in the same way that, with proper ventilation 

 (and other improvements) of the stables of the horses, coughs 

 and catarrhs disappeared. He also quotes Dr. Leeds, of New 

 York, to show that the supposed cure of sending a consumptive 

 patient to a cow-stable was in reality the cure of sending him 

 into somewhat purer air than that of his own room (page 502). 

 Dr. Richardson quotes a case where no less than nine members of 

 a family following the occupation of Cheap Jack were in succes- 

 sion the victims of consumption from sleeping in a traveling van, 

 their life in the open air during the day being insufficient to 

 counteract the poison breathed in the night (Our Homes, page 

 11). Parkes also tells us (page 152) that in the royal navy and in 

 the mercantile navy bad ventilation and phthisis, occasionally 

 amounting to a veritable epidemic, have accompanied each other ; 

 and he quotes many authorities insisting upon the close relation 

 between foul air and pulmonary consumption. On the same 

 point the slaughter produced by unventilated barracks Dr. 

 Richardson tells us the mortality in the army before Sebastopol 

 was during twenty-two weeks ending May 31, 1856, at the rate of 

 12*5 per 1,000 as against 20*4 of the Guards quartered in England 

 (Our Homes, page 13). Dr. A. Ransome reports (Health Lect- 

 ures, 1875-76, page 149) a case as late as 1861, where fearful lung 

 disease broke out in some of the ships of the royal navy. The 

 arrangements were actually such that only fourteen inches space 

 was allowed to each hammock, and the air above the hammock 

 was 8 to 10 hotter than below.* 



The same evidence comes from the sedentary trades, some of 

 which "afford experimental conditions for the development of 

 disease"; from the cases of phthisis, or destructive lung disease, 

 among cows in unventilated sheds (Parkes, page 162) ; from the 

 higher rate of consumption in town as against village, and city 

 as against town (Hirsch, page 213) in each case the dearer lodg- 

 ing implying more overcrowding; from the outdoor treatments 

 now recommended for consumptive patients; and from other 

 sources, f 



When we come to pneumonia, it is still the same poisons, we 

 believe, which indirectly are at work. As in pulmonary con- 



* The violence of so-called Russian influenza in America is probably to some extent 

 the result of the breathing of highly impure air, which is so common in that country. 

 We suspect that this disease is just one of the many forms of trouble which appear where 

 people live in constant disregard of the purity of the air of their living-rooms. The subject 

 demands attention from this point of view. 



f There are many interesting points such as the discussion as regards the effect of 

 dampness of soil, and Hirsch's theory as regards the high Mexican plateaus which have 

 to be considered, but they do not seem to shake the main fact that impure air is the great 

 ally of pulmonary consumption. 



