NO. 23 INFLUENCE OF ATMOSPHERE ON HEALTH II 



motor-boat cabins. Here, again, we have massive infection, and the 

 reduction of the defensive mechanisms by the influence of the warm, 

 moist atmosphere. 



The Norwegian fishermen feed on brown bread, boiled fish, salt 

 mutton, and margarine, and drink, when in money, beer and 

 schnapps; there is no gross deficiency in diet, as in Labrador, and 

 beri-beri does not attack them. They return home to their villages 

 and longshore fishing when the season is over. The one new condi- 

 tion which is common to the two districts is confinement in stove- 

 heated, windless atmospheres. In old days the men were crowded 

 together, but in open boats or in draughty shanties, and had nothing 

 but little cooking-stoves. 



The conditions of great cities tend to confine the worker in the 

 office all day, and to the heated atmosphere of club, cinema show, 

 or music-hall in the evening. The height of houses prevents the 

 town dweller from being blown upon by the wind, and, missing the 

 exhilarating stimulus of the cool, moving air, he repels the dull uni- 

 formity of existence by tobacco and by alcohol, or by indulgence in 

 food, for example, sweets, which are everywhere to his hand, and by 

 the nervous excitement of business and amusement. He works, he 

 eats, and is amused in warm, windless atmospheres, and suffers from 

 a feeble circulation, a shallow respiration, a disordered digestion, 

 and a slow rate of metabolism. 



Many of the employments of modern days are detestable in their 

 long hours of confinement and monotony. Men go up and down in 

 a lift all day, and girls in the bloom of youth are set down in tobacco 

 stalls in underground stations, and their health and beauty there fade 

 while even the blow-flies are free to bask in the sun. In factories the 

 operatives feed machines, or reproduce the same small piece of an 

 article day after day. There is no art, no change, no pleasure in 

 contrivance and accomplishment. The miner, the fisherman, even 

 the sewerman, face difficulties, changing risks, and are developed as 

 men of character and strength. Contrast the sailor with the steward 

 on a steamer, the drayman outside with the clerk inside who checks 

 the goods delivered at some city office, the butcher and the tailor, 

 the seamstress and the market woman, and one sees the enormous 

 difference which a confined occupation makes. Monotonous seden- 

 tary employment makes for unhappiness because the inherited func- 

 tional needs of the human body are neglected, and education — when 

 the outside field of interest is narrowed' — intensities the sensitivity 

 to the bodilv conditions. The sensations arising within the body — 



