﻿58 ATMOSPHERE IN RELATION TO HUMAN LIFE AND HEALTH. 



air, good and well-cooked food, clean dwellings and clean byres, and in 

 segregating or specially controlling and caring for affected individuals. 

 Close courts, back-to-back houses, damp cottages, tuberculous meat and 

 milk, overcrowding, and dusty occupations in heated air deserve either 

 total condemnation or most rigid precautions. Rooms should be con- 

 structed so as to be easily and frequently cleaned and constantly aired. 

 The habit of wetting envelopes, ledger pages, etc., from the mouth 

 should be i^rohibited. ^Notification of cases should be required as in 

 other infectious diseases. Light, air, space, exercise, and cleanliness 

 should be made easy of attainment and common to every human being. 



TYPHUS. 



Another disease intimately associated with bad air and with crowded 

 dwellings is typhus. It does not arise at all among persons living in 

 the open air and in well- ventilated rooms, but spreads with fatal effect 

 in the crowded, dirty apartments of the poor, in filthy jails, ships, and 

 lodging houses. The disease was formerly very destructive in England, 

 infesting the prisons, and was sometimes communicated to judges and 

 lawyers into whose i)resence prisoners were brought; but better con- 

 ditions of living, greater cleanliness, and more regard for ventilation 

 have resulted in its almost complete extermination. So sensitive is the 

 microbe to fresh, air and disturbance of foul surfaces that the crowding 

 and dirt which remain, bad as they are, are scarcely sufficient to main- 

 tain its virulence. Typhus is not conveyed far by the air, and as a rule 

 only infects those who are very near to the victim. All the staff of the 

 Fever Hospital, in London, were attacked at some time through this 

 infection, but during eight years no case occurred among the staff' of 

 the Smallpox Hospital, which was in close proximity. Even the attend- 

 ants in typhus wards run little risk when these are spacious, well venti- 

 lated, and not overcrowded. Poisonous microbic emanations from the 

 lungs and skin are thus in an almost incredible space of time rendered 

 harmless by the action of fresh air. 



The winter has generally been the season of greatest prevalence of 

 typhus, owing probably to the greater distress and crowding in the cold 

 months. The infection remains for some time on clothing, walls, etc., 

 so that the air does not apparently disinfect or destroy where the 

 organism has sufficient moisture and nourishment. 



THE PLAGUE. 



The plague, a very severe pestilence which has been common in the 

 East and in Korth Africa, and has visited Europe with the most appall- 

 ing mortality, arises in districts where filth abounds to the most extent, 

 where dwellings are overcrowded, and where famine and undernourish- 

 ment are frequent. It is both miasmatic and contagious. In 1603 it 

 hardly ever entered a house but it seized all living there. Prolonged 

 breathing of the sick-room air was the most effectual means of infection. 



