MODERN IDEAS OF SANITABY ECONOMY. 



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a child : I found that in a fine country, with fine air and in a 

 healthy place, three people had been nearly stifled, and one, a 

 child, had died. Where there is not a warm atmosphere it 

 will be sought for at the expense of health ; and both here and 

 in the snow-huts of the north, people will crowd together for 

 the first demand of comfort — warmth. It is vain, as it is 

 also absurd, to tell people to ventilate, when it simply starves 

 them. Experience tells us that warmth will not be dispensed 

 with, and all classes will be found to stop up ventilating holes 

 if they send in a current of cold air. I consider, then, that 

 the first step to be taken towards ventilation is warming. 

 The modes of warming are already known, and it is known 

 that by hot air or water it is done more cheaply than by open 

 fires. Then why not do it? 



If the temperature were raised only four or five degrees on 

 an average during the year, it would be a difierence equal to 

 the warm south-west of England, and the south-east. No 

 doubt many persons ask the question — Why should working 

 men have such luxuries, which they have not been brought 

 up to? It has been abundantly proved that they are not 

 luxuries, but that these people have a less chance of life ; 

 the means, therefore, of ameliorating their condition become 

 necessaries of life. They do not live well enough ; the result 

 proves that they have not become accustomed to their condi- 

 tion. It has been shewn abundantly that they yield to it 

 simply by dying. Dr. Percival, whose observations before the 

 Board of Health were always very comprehensive, remarked 

 of the state of infant labour at the time, (1796,) "that it 

 tends to diminish future expectations as to the general sum 

 of life and industry, by impairing the strength and destroying 

 the vital stamina of the rising generation," &c. ; and Dr. 

 Ferriar, in remarks to the same Board, said — " The obvious 

 extension of the cares of the committee to a superintendence 

 of the morals of the poor, as intimately connected with the 

 preservation of their health, comprehends a variety of most 



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