NO. 23 INFLUENCE OF ATMOSPHERE ON HEALTH -'7 



from food eaten, such as onions, garlic ; from carious teeth ; from 

 the had hreath of dyspepsia, due to regurgitation of food particles 

 and their decay on the unhealthy, flabby mucous membrane of the 

 tongue ; from the passage of wind from the alimentary canal ; from 

 dirty clothes soiled with body secretions — sweat, menstrual dis- 

 charge, etc. The clothes, too, absorb smells such as those of the stable, 

 tobacco, etc., and give these out. The air may also be contaminated 

 by smells of cooking, or smells arising from urinals, latrines, stables, 

 etc., or by trade smells, many of which are most offensive to the 

 newcomer. The smell is only sensed by, and excites disgust in, one 

 who comes to it from the outside air. He who is inside, and helps 

 to make the " fugg," is both wholly unaware of and unaffected by 

 it. Fliigge 1 points out, with justice, that while we naturally avoid 

 any smell that excites disgust and puts us off our appetite, yet the 

 offensive quality of the smell does not prove its poisonous nature. 

 For the smell of the trade or food of one man may be horrible and 

 loathsome to another. 



The sight of a slaughterer and the smell of dead meat may be 

 loathsome to the sensitive poet, but the slaughterer is none the less 

 healthy. The clang and jar of an engineer's workshop may be 

 unendurable to a highly-strung artist or author, but the artificers 

 miss the stoppage of the noisy clatter. The stench of glue-works, 

 fried-fish shops, soap and bone-manure works, middens, sewers, be- 

 comes as nothing to those engaged in such ; and the lives of the 

 workers are in no wise shortened by the stench they endure. The 

 nose ceases to respond to the uniformity of the impulse, and the 

 stench clearly does not betoken in any of these cases the existence 

 of a chemical organic poison. On descending into a sewer, after 

 the first ten minutes, the nose ceases to smell the stench ; the air 

 therein is usually found to be far freer from bacteria than the air 

 in a schoolroom or tenement (Haldane). 



If we turn to foodstuffs, we recognize that the smell of alcohol 

 and of stilton or camembert cheese is horrible to a child, while the 

 smell of putrid fish — the meal of the Siberian native — excites no less 

 disgust in an epicure who welcomes the cheese. Among the hardiest 

 and healthiest of men are the North Sea fishermen, who sleep in the 

 cabins of trawlers reeking with fish and oil, and for the sake of 

 warmth shut themselves up until the lamp may go out from want of 

 oxygen. The stench of such surroundings may effectually put the 

 sensitive, untrained brain-worker off his appetite, but the robust 



1 Ztschr. f . Hygiene, Vol. 49, 1905, p. 4.^. 



