3i8 SCIENCE: PROGRESS 



Ventilation and Chills 



The question of ventilation is treated very differently in different Countries. 

 We in England are, or pretend to be, inured to chills and not very apprehensive 

 of draughts, and think that this is a manly attitude. But on the Continent 

 people often insist upon shutting railway-carriage windows when the Briton bares 

 his brow to the wintry blast with complete (or pretended) indifference. Hence 

 certain quarrels we have witnessed. Which is the right attitude ? 



Our theory appears to be based upon the view that we do not get chills when 

 walking in the open air, and indeed feel the benefit of such exercise. But a 

 person who is sitting in a draughty room or railway-carriage is not taking the 

 exercise which warms him against the cold of the atmosphere when he is walking. 

 During a long railway journey we may become thoroughly chilled and open to the 

 attacks of the numerous germs which are living upon our skin, throat, nose, or 

 elsewhere, waiting for an opportunity to enter the deeper blood or tissues, or of 

 other germs which may be hiding in the carriage cushions. The cold air may 

 perhaps impede the attacks of the latter germs, but will tend, by chilling the 

 patient, to encourage the former ones. On the whole, then, the case for sitting 

 in draughts may be questioned ; and there are numbers of subsidiary factors 

 which are usually ignored — such as excessive meat-eating, alcohol, previous 

 illness, and so on. Our theory that a close room means much poisoning with 

 exhaled matter has been rather exploded by the work of Prof. Leonard Hill and 

 others. It may be that the danger of being thoroughly chilled is much worse 

 than the danger of infection by germs floating in the air of a close room. At all 

 events, many people declare that they get colds by sitting in draughty places, 

 while others say they get them by going to crowded assemblies in ill-ventilated 

 trails. 



Our mode of life is based upon our theories. Our sash windows are probably 

 the most irrational things in creation. They appear to have been first invented 

 in Holland, and brought over to England towards the close of the seventeenth 

 century, in place of the rational French windows. It must have been a curious 

 person who invented the former, which are often dangerous owing to the breaking 

 of the cords, while a draught is always pouring in between the two sashes. What 

 their advantage is, no one can understand, and we are glad to see that they are 

 now being replaced again in new houses by the French windows. On the other 

 hand French windows, as will be easily seen anywhere on the Continent or in 

 Egypt or elsewhere, may be closed to exclude either draught or noise, and to our 

 mind, look much better. Moreover, seldom if ever do we have double windows 

 such as are used throughout Northern Europe. 



Our open fires do not warm the rooms, while they flood the atmosphere with 

 particles of carbon, and are the most wasteful method of producing artificial heat. 

 On several occasions the writer has left England in the depth of winter for Russia, 

 Germany or Sweden, and has never been cold until he returned here. On lone 

 occasion a Canadian told him that England is the coldest country that he was 

 ever in ; and most foreigners make the same exclamation. In Russia the double 

 windows are kept closed nearly throughout the winter ; the house is ventilated by 

 proper arrangements of pure heated air brought up from the basement, with a 

 great saving in cost and with the effect of enabling all the inmates to keep warm 

 all day and night. In fact, in the middle of a Russian winter people wear only 

 thin under-vests and sleep at night with a single blanket : while we shiver and 

 shake before smoky fires and dress in thick semi-arctic clothing, besides having 

 the privilege of wasting a large part of our income on coal. To be brief, Swedes, 



