LECTURES. 147 



ON THE 'TROGRESS OF ARCHITECTURE IN RELATION TO VENTILATION, 

 WARMING, LIGHTING, FIRE-RROOFING, ACOUSTICS, AND THE GENERAL 

 PRESERVATION OF HEALTH." 



BY D. B. REID, M. D., F. R. S. E., 



FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF EDINBURGH, ETC., ETC., ETC. 



FIRST LECTURE. 



Professor Henry introduced Dr. Reid to the audience, and, in ad- 

 verting to his plans for ventilation, quoted an extract from some recent 

 proceedings of the Royal Institution in London, where Dr. Bence 

 Jones had given certain statistical details showing the great reduction 

 of mortality in an hospital which Dr. Reid had ventilated, and that 

 the mortality increased again when the ventilation was suspended. 



After responding to the remarks of Professor Henry, Dr. Reid 

 claimed the indulgence of the audience in entering on a course while 

 still imperfectly acquainted with this country, and perhaps not yet 

 fully acclimated to it, as the experience of personal illness for the last 

 fort-night had taught him. 



Dr. Reid then commenced his first lecture with a general sketch of 

 the position in which man is placed on this globe. With his natural 

 wants at first supplied in a congenial climate, he was still, at a very 

 early period of history, like a traveller without a guide in resi)ect to 

 many departments of phy-sique, except those external senses which an 

 omnipotent creator had given him wherewith to steer his course in the 

 material world. Increase of knowledge, arts, and manufactures gradu- 

 ally accompanied an increasing population. New climates, new wants, 

 and new occupations stimulated his ingenuity and rewarded his inven- 

 tion as much as it increased his comforts. Dwellings in caves or clefts 

 of rocks, such as are described in the Sacred Scriptures, as well as tents 

 and huts, the primitive abodes of man, soon gave way in many places 

 to more systematic habitations, though these are still to be found away 

 from the scenes of civilization. Monuments and public temples then 

 arose in Cyclopean, Egyptian, Druidical, Indian, Chinese, and Mexi- 

 can architecture. The Greeks, with the finest eye for beauty and pro- 

 portion, excelled all their predecessors ; the Romans added a gorge- 

 ousness and luxuriance of ornament that competed with, without rival- 

 ling, the severe and more scrupulous taste of G-recian architecture; and 

 then followed a host of styles that have multiplied indefinitely, in 



